Tag Archives: machine embroidery

Free SVG Alphabet – Handwritten Monoline Script

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Advent 2019 Day 2

One of the things I’ve been most disappointed in is the availability of lettering for embroidery. Or rather, the reliability. So here’s an alphabet that’s in SVG form, so you can edit it yourself. It’s (somewhat roughly) based on Amalina, a font by Subectype, and is only the lowercase 26-letter English alphabet.

AmalinaLowercase.zip

It’s just a plain SVG file. Each letter is an object that you’ll have to manually copy and paste. It’s a continuous script, so if you have snapping set you can align them easily. You can then use Ink/Stitch to produce a stitch file, or feed the SVG to your Cricut or Silhouette to draw the font. I don’t have a laser or other engraver (yet!) but I’m sure you folks know what to do with an SVG to use it with your device. Read on regardless of what type of machine you plan to use; I’ve made some notes on putting polish on a word in script.

Here’s the demo as it came off my embroidery machine. The top is just a straight copy-paste of each letter at the original size.

  • I changed the stroke style to a dashed line (because otherwise Ink/Stitch will treat it as a very tiny satin stitch).
  • I ungrouped the first “a” and removed the positioning segment. Optional, but just a little cleaner. For a letter without a positioning segment, like an “l,” I might have added a stroke coming into the letter to reflect where your pen would naturally start.
  • I ungrouped the “i” to make the dot stitch last. Also optional, but it meant I had a nice long jump stitch to trim (and a machine that automatically cuts jump thread would do so).

The middle is slightly changed.

  • I sized the letters up.
  • I used a single-repeat “bean” stitch (i.e. a forward-back-forward for each stitch) for all the non-positioning segments.
  • I moved the second part of the word down, reordered the segments (including the positioning segment in the “a”) and reversed all the paths, so that it stitched left to right.

The alphabet also works in satin at larger sizes

  • I converted all the non-positioning segments back to a solid line, 2mm thick (about the minimum for an adequate satin on this vinyl)

That’s about as small as a 2mm satin works on this font; as you can see the counter on the “a” basically disappears. That piece of vinyl is 7″ wide so it works well at a larger scale. You’ll have to consider this if you’re using it with a marker in a cutting machine – smaller sizes will definitely need fine points.

Right-to-left works all right for straight stitch; it’s almost impossible to see that there is a straight stitch over the bean stitch on that “a.” But remember that the positioning stitch will happen after the main stitching so you’ll want to leave it out if you’re right-to-lefting your satin stitch.

Have fun! I’d love to see links to anything you use this for.

Delivery Truck Snap Tabs

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As promised, here is the delivery-truck snap tab freebie. It fits in a 4×4 hoop.

All four trucks are included in one file, so you’ll need to run only the thread colors for the version you want. In the SVG source file, they’re in separate layers so if you prefer you can hide the layers you don’t need and use Ink/Stitch to produce the embroidery file.

Construction is the same as other snap tabs: float a piece of vinyl on top of your stabilizer and embroider on it. Just before the last color, take the hoop off the machine and secure a second piece of vinyl on the back of the stabilizer to cover the threads.

  • Placement Box – Optional; this will show you the size and placement of the top vinyl. I usually just advance to the first stitch and use the needle position to align the lower left corner of the vinyl.
  • Truck – This is the outline of the truck itself. I used gray for the two white trucks, and the logo color for the blue and brown trucks.
  • UPS – This is the shield logo, which should be run in gold.
  • Amazon – This is the arrow, which should be run in light blue.
  • USPS – These are three thread colors in one layer: blue for the logo, red for the top stripe, blue for the bottom stripe. It makes for an extra thread swap (I just jumped ahead to the second blue and then back to the red) but gives you the chance to skip the stripes altogether if you prefer.
  • FedEx – These are two thread colors in one layer: purple and orange, or purple and green.
  • Outline – Place the second piece of vinyl on the back side of the hoop before running this, which will stitch the whole thing together. Run this in the vinyl color – the bobbin thread will show so you may want to use a matching thread there too. It will put in a couple of stitches to indicate snap placement. Pull those threads out completely if you can.

Delivery Fob download (ZIP with DST, EXP, JEF, PEC, PES, U01, VP3, and SVG source file)

Figuring out a 5×12″ hoop

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One of the first things I bought for my machine was a set of four Embroidex hoops 📦. The Brother PE-800 comes with a single 5×7 hoop, which is enough to get by, but 4×4 uses up less stabilizer and, it later turned out, having a second 5×7 was useful for mass-producing. If you’re gonna do a design with forty-leven color changes, might as well sew at least two.

The other two hoops are a tiny one for pocket designs, and a 5×12″ monster with three attachment points. When I made the solid-color crowntail dragon, I sewed its wing piece in two hoopings because alignment (other than front-to-back) wasn’t that critical. But it would be really nice, with the extremely festive pre-printed ones, if I could carefully align it once, nail it down, and stitch it out. It was time to figure out that 12″ hoop.

If you look closely at that picture, you can see a bunch of white thread. That was a bunch of trial patterns wherein I confirmed that the attachment points are 6cm apart. Very good: the next step was to break my design up into two pieces that each fit in a 5×7″ stitching area, and move one 12cm onto the other (to the left, in the case of that wing).

The attachment points are in the bottom of the picture above, and the little arrows show where the two designs meet. The lower one, which ends up on the left when the thing is in the machine, was a perfect match. The upper two overlapped by an extra stitch. The larger hoop can distort more easily, so that may be what’s happening here. If it’s consistent, I may be able to find a rotation that corrects for it.

So, you may wonder, how does one take an existing pattern and split it up? Welllllll… I’m told commercial software can do it, but I don’t know which one or how. With Ink/Stitch, it’s a manual process, but it works on imported designs as well as native ones. Import the file if you’re not using your own SVG, find a natural break point, break the node and the path. Rinse and repeat for each run of thread until you have a piece that fits in your 5×7 hoop. Then take the rest of it and move it 12cm down or sideways (depending on the orientation of your design). Done!

Okay, not always that simple. If your color changes overlap, you might need to interleave the two designs, and switch mounting points to do all of one color, then all of the next. Not fun. Putting each run of each color on a different layer may help with organizing them, although you’ll have to remember to insert a stop (or a mock color change) between the two halves of the color so you have time to shift the hoop.

It’s going to take some more experimentation to figure out the most efficient way to do this, so stay tuned.

Pokeball Snap Tab

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Mostly resting my wrists after completing the dragons, but I whipped up another little freebie snap tab design. Apparently my lavender dragon was close enough to an Aerodactyl for someone, so one of these will get tucked in with that.

Happy Independence Day

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This isn’t much of an embroidery design; it’s just Ink/Stitch’s built-in font. But if I wore ball caps* and had a hat hoop, this is what I’d wear. Not in red** but maybe teal or purple. The file includes a 4×4 size for hats, and a 5×7 size for totes or whatever, in case you still haven’t tried Ink/Stitch out yourself.

*I wear sun hats; I was born a redhead and while my hair has darkened, my skin has not.
**For the obvious reason, but also because again, redhead coloring.

The dragon emoji downloadable is up

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I’ve added the Emoji One Dragon snap tab to the free embroidery designs page. Have fun with it.

I’ve been resting my wrists a bit before working more on the art doll dragons; I’m a week or two late in getting them posted, but this batch is kind of a step up in complexity and I want to make sure they’re done right.

I’ve been restocking beanies and experimenting with different colors for the bronze and/or greens; those will likely show up in the limited-edition slot after the lavenders sell out.

Ampersand snap tabs

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When we realized the kid’s birthday fell on D&D night, clearly it was time to make some party favors (or if you prefer: hobbit-style birthday presents). I made use of the ampersand from the dice tray which, I just realized when I tried to link there, I never blogged about! Let me fix that briefly:

It’s pretty much the same as the Jayhawk version, scaled up. It’s a 4×4 inset, but the tray snaps to a little under 8×10 as I recall. I did the rest of the stitching on a conventional machine because, as you can see from the String Theory one above, you can barely squeak out a 3×3 tray doing it entirely in a 5×7 hoop.

Aaaaanyway, I should probably update that one and publish it too. I think I may have been planning to redo it as an applique first, because it is an absurd stitch count.

I remembered this when I scaled it down for the snap tab: making ten or fifteen of those would take forever and at the smaller size was just a little too muddy. I switched it to a bean outline and I’m much happier with it, other than picking out the stabilizer. (As you can see, the black one isn’t done but I decided to rinse it out instead.)

I also went to town with some other String Theory designs. The dice are larger than I really like (maxing out a 4×4 hoop) but it wasn’t worth making my own design just for the sake of this.

Appropriately, the critical-failure die gave me fits. Nothing wrong with the stitch file, it was either the vinyl or I might need to clean out the machine. It kept breaking thread. I rethreaded the bobbin a couple of times, then changed out the bobbin. It wrapped the top thread around its spindle a couple times. Then it broke the needle. Eventually I got it done, and then realized I hadn’t backed the stitching up enough and there was some missing satin stitching right in the middle of the 1. No problem, I thought, I haven’t unhooped so I’ll just run all the way back and pick it up.

Yeah, that doesn’t actually work when you’ve already put the backing on. :facepalm:

(Luckily I wasn’t doing this for the shop because that is NOT up to my quality-control standards.)

In any case, the ampersand is now on the free Embroidery Patterns page.

Warframe Snap Tab: Clem The Grineer

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If you don’t know what anything in that subject line means, it’s okay. It’s a Warframe thing and you can basically skip the whole rest of this post.

I only roughly know what it means, but Warframe is the new obsession in my house (and I’m not even talking about the teenager). I was regrettably behind the times and got my husband an Overwatch LEGO set for Father’s Day awhile back, so I whipped up a snap tab to make up for it.

The files are on the embroidery files page as usual. There’s an instruction file in the archive, but it’s pretty straightforward. If you’re not using white vinyl, there’s a template and placement stitch for an applique. Advice: if you use hologram vinyl like I did, use non-holo stuff for the back like I did, or prepare to go blind trying to cut the thing out through the dazzle.

I have a stash of 10mm cabochon rhinestones I picked up on clearance as possible dragon eyes, so I scaled the design to that. If I was buying them for the project, I might pick up 8mm instead. These are clear matte, but gold pearl would work too, or regular faceted rhinestones if you can’t find cabs.

Measure twice, cut once

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Today was a “learning from my mistakes” sort of day.

I have been dialing back on things a little to give my wrist a rest (since I worked all through Memorial Day weekend), but after a trip to Aldi I thought I’d do a little something for myself.

Aldi requires a quarter deposit to free up its shopping carts. There are no cart returns in the parking lot, and no employees running around collecting abandoned carts. It’s a small store and a small lot, and you just take your cart back yourself or, if it’s busy, someone will come up to you as you’re unloading, brandishing a quarter and offering to “buy” your cart from you.

Occasionally they sell little official quarter keepers, and I bought one which I hate. The quarter goes all the way in and a little past the slot, and requires prying back out with fingernails. Plus, I always want *two* quarters, because you’ll often run into someone fumbling for a quarter or just staring at the chains in newbie confusion. So I made a little bi-fold quarter keeper.

My first draft (the white one) was a little large. Clearly I’ve been traumatized by my too-small official keeper, but I wanted to make sure the quarter didn’t get stuck. Instead, the quarter falls out too easily and unpredictably when you’re opening it. I also decided trimming the curves was too finicky, so I opted for a more angular design. Lastly, since I got hold of some Gritty fabric, I decided to make an applique window.

Here’s where I started making mistakes. Quick and dirty little thing, right? Good time to try out wax paper on top of the vinyl to see if it keeps things from sticking. It does, but it is kind of a pain to get out of the stitching so it’s fine for fill embroidery, not so much for topstitching.

Then I was in too much of a hurry and forgot to put in the ribbon until it was almost up to that point in the stitching. I didn’t have any black or orange or even white ribbon narrow enough, so I cut a piece of vinyl and stuck it in without taking the hoop off, and of course it didn’t end up straight.

Then I was too lazy to walk across the room and get the good applique scissors (the Mundials 📦) and so I used Mom’s Ginghers, which are much coarser, so the (reverse) applique window isn’t as neat as it could be.

I also lined the quarter pocket with more of the Gritty fabric which was probably a mistake; it’s going to fray around the edges in the 1/16″ between the topstitching and the edge. I could have gotten around that with some fray-check (and still can, but the stuff is nasty) or by ironing some Heat-n-Bond onto the back of it. The fabric only had the words in one size and they were a little too big for the space, but it still amuses me.

I also realized, come snap insertion time. that the vinyl “ribbon” was almost down to the snap insertion point. Since I only have regular orange snaps instead of longs (and only round, when 🧡 would have been ideal), the snap came together at an angle and broke off instead of inserting. After trying (and failing) with three of them, I finally gave up and put in a black one.

All of which is to say: the design is fine, but I’m going to make a nicer version before I write up the instructions. It’ll go on the free embroidery design page when I do.