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Plan Your Embroidered Monogram

So once you've decided on your colors on your patterns and and those types of things that you want for your you're finished project for this well bad boy that we're working on you're ready to start so the first thing we're going to talk about which is pretty familiar if you followed along with us to do the hack and the surreal paper is in your class materials for the class is a beautiful alphabet which is the font that I used for the project this is my zelma rose fund for my brand and and all of my logo and everything I really like it but you know hey, so I thought that would be nice to share with you because it's a little bit unusual it's definitely modern and when you if you print this at home yourself a couple things that I did I I kept its one document so if you print the whole thing you'll get all twenty six letters of the alphabet one to each page I kept it won t each page not to be like a wild waster of paper but because if you do want to do a monogram or initials I'll show you ...

as I'm doing mine but you're going to wantto cut the paper and then move individual letters close to each other so you get them appropriately lined up when you're tracing on the surreal paper etcetera so all the letters air here they're beautiful if you print tio at home if you're printing one hundred percent please is how you should be printing that will make sure that the letters come out the appropriate size for not only your hoop but for your finished canvas if you want to do something amazing it's like sixteen by sixteen inches then printed two hundred percent he'll get the letters will come out twice a big so you can play around with that a little bit if you are choosing fonda's I was mentioning before with the beautiful fun book or you have your own front that you want to use you might have to play around with size I find the easiest way to do that is when it comes into printing so fifty percent one hundred percent whatever you feel like is going toe lineup in the sight scoop that were using and then be appropriate for that distance that we're talking about in terms of keeping the design minded approach how far contrast and all that but these air sized perfectly for what we're doing so your first run at this I told you recommend using this off of it after you finish this project and you feel like a rock star and I want to do something else then go for it if you were going to be following along and you want to teo your own hand lettered font then shoot for something about this size I would say make some marks on your surreal paper that are about the same size of these letters, so you give yourself a little bit of a guide in terms of what's going to fit right here and here, so you want to make sure you have a pretty clear space and a hard surface forgetting your letters going if you want, you can make a couple marks, has your letters should fit within your who? Because that's going to be how you're holding the fabric tight and you're working? So if you want a guide, you could make just a couple of light pencil marks where your hoop is give you some indication as to where the letters should go, so I have a few light marks on here to guide me, so I'm going to choose to do two letters this time on I'm gonna walk you through how to line it up and then again how to use the surreal paper, get everything looking nice and need to get the best start of your project, so I like to cut access off here just to make it easier for myself. It doesn't have to be straight, but cunning enough gives me the option to put the letters is close together as you want, so I'm going to just look at my pencil marks, so okay want probably my first letter to be about there you can tell and super neat and exact about heading the letters out it doesn't matter whatever works for you, so I kind of like that spacing for my letters that gives me enough space around it to do some customization and also gives me enough space in between the letters if I want to put a couple of french dots or some customs agents in some other stitches in there, so I'm happy with that spacing trim this and here to see ok, that looks pretty centered, so this is I've made my decision and amir forward, so I'm going to take my sterile paper if you followed along with us, which the with the backs did check you can use that same piece of surreal paper it's not goingto we're out, you can use is over and everything but it graphite side down yeah doesn't matter which way the grain of the fabric is going for this project, I would not do it on the bias. Okay, so tiffany asked a really good question in terms of the way you want to put the fabric in the hoop or set it up for your letters with embroidery, and I talked about this in the intro class you'll see this hoop is set up on the bias, the fabric so it's like a little triangle, which does not matter at all, but you can see the fabric is running this way the grain of the fabric totally worked out in this instance her way but when you're doing letters if you want things to be straight especially if you're using this alphabet this alphabet is super modern and very very straight so you want to go with the leave of the fabric you wanted to be up and down and not diagonal unless you want your letters on a dagnall which would be an awesome choice that you could make so after I put my cereal paper down I just like tio check again to get an idea of where the center is to do that you can make just a light tap on your cereal paper to get your marks again I'm gonna find my letters that you could use tape if you want it's up to you that looks good to my eye ok so again with your pencil you want to use an hb or number two you could also use a b you don't wantto due to h or anything like that it's going to be too hard make sure it's sharp you want to put pretty decent pressure and then for these letters what I like to do is just outline it if you want to use a ruler you can my eyes pretty good so I'm not going to and if you think through embroidery you're going to get an exact super straight letter anyway you're not going to, so let go of that now surrender that now and then I always like to check before I lift the letter my getting enough and I can see there's some areas where I want to press a little bit harder, okay? I don't know if you see that you can see I'm starting to get a line there, so that looks pretty good to me, so I'm going to move on to the next letter and remember with this that you're going through two layers of paper, you're not only pressing through the paper that the alphabet is on, but you're pressing through the surreal paper to get the mark so a heavy hand is welcome thing here, ok, so I've gotten pretty good transfer of my letters good to see that. So ideally this is what you should get about this darkness, our likeness that's what she should be going for their that's, something you'll be able to easily see. So once you have that one of the things about using several paper with a table or with anything that you're working on is tryto sort of put it away, roll it up and put it away because it will transfer enough you could see a little bit on my fingertips transfer a little bit, you know, if you guys can see it on camera, but it's it's definitely there, so I'm gonna be glamorous and just do that, which is about a totally doing real life anyway and then once you have your letters, you want tio as best as possible as we talked about in the introductory course, having the same amount of fabric on top of your hoop as you do on the bottom and side to side now with your letters, you'll see she got them perfectly straight or not, that might look pretty good, actually, so I'm gonna prove myself to move forward can't make this up a little bit that looks pretty good now. One of the really cool things about stretching fabric over canvas stretchers is that if there's any so full disclosure, when I finished this, there was a little bit of, like crookedness in the ass that I was having a hard time living with when I stretch this, I stretched it more tightly on this side here and here and was able to straighten just this letter because I'm a unicorn, but I'll show you when we're stretched everything, how you can kind of if things get a little bit wonky, how framing something like this can kind of save you, so we'll talk about that in the finishing part, but right now this looks pretty good with letters or any time you're doing more exact work, I really like to get a tight surface of fabric on the hoop so I'm going to come around and see how you guys were doing with your transfers if you have any questions and then I think we'll get rolling so this is a great example tiffani tiffany has exemplified the cyril graphite fingerprint which I'm going to say use it and figure out how to cover it up because she's quite stephanie's quite skilled so I know she can do it the other way to get past that would be of you know just be careful realize you might get it on your fingers wash your hands glamorous use your pants always were black yeah yeah okay. How about you rachel yeah good yeah, that looks good now I have the best students she aaron got fancy and decided to do something off center which is another way you can add some friday it doesn't always have to be down the middle like that you could have something off center on the campus which is very nice when I sort of that's the way I started doing right so but that's my transfer right here? Yeah ok good. Okay. So rather than the satin stitch letters I'm going to show you a different way of getting a lot of impact in the letters without having to be so exact if you want to do the census which definitely go for it just understand that you're involving yourself in something that's time consuming and pretty exact. So when I was doing these stitches, when kidney was asking about putting the fabric on a bias, we're up and down in the hoop. I was following, along with the grain of the fabric, which, if you can see if you get really close to the kind of train, show you. How so you can see that there's a grain to this fabric. And I was, as I was stitching this way. I was following a line in the fabric on either side, along with the line that I had done with the tracing of my letter. So I was really trying to keep it in line and that's. How you can keep it straight with a satin stitches to pay attention to the grain of the fabric.