Tips for Working with Alphabets
The Embroidery Library has 100 alphabets for your personalizing and monogramming needs. Some alphabets consist of capital letters only; some include lower case, numbers, and punctuation. You can find the enormous selection by clicking here. We sell alphabets -- we do not sell fonts. Alphabets consist of individual designs of letters and numbers. The individual designs of letters and characters are packaged together into one downloadable file -- an alphabet. They are different from fonts. Fonts are files that can be manipulated by machines or embroidery software programs to create designs of words and monograms. Alphabets will give you higher quality than fonts (fonts that are created "on-the-fly" by machines or embroidery software programs tend to have insufficient lock-ins and density), but they do take a bit of extra time to work with. Fonts are faster to work with (embroidery programs let you type away to create names, monograms, and words), but the quality suffers. When using alphabets, you can stitch one letter at a time, just as you would any design. But most embroiderers prefer to merge designs (letters) together to form words and monograms, and then send that new design to their embroidery machine. It makes lining up the letters a lot easier! Merging designs together requires embroidery software. Instructions showing two types of software are below.
The first example shows how to merge designs together with Embird, available from www.Embird.com. We'll merge three letters together to make a monogram. The letters we used are from the Bodoni Alphabet. 1. Place the letters that you want to merge into one folder. Open Embird, and direct the program to that folder. Click on one of the files, and then click on 'Editor' to go into 'Editor' mode.
2. In Editor mode, choose 'File' and 'Merge.' Select the second file and click 'OK.' Click on 'File' and 'Merge' again, and select the third monogram letter. Click 'OK.'
3. Now all three files will be in your work area. Click on them and move them around until they are arranged in the manner that you want -- either a monogram or a word. When the letters are arranged to your satisfaction, choose 'File' and 'Save.' Now you're ready to put it into your machine and embroider!
Now, we'll use VIP Customizer to combine the same letters designs to form a monogram. 1. Open each letter. Open the center letter of the monogram first, because the software automatically opens the first design in the exact center of the hoop outline. This will make it easier for you when you are lining up the letters to know that the middle letter is perfectly centered. The remaining letters will open elsewhere in the workspace.
2. Click and drag the right and left letters into place. Use the center letter and grid lines as references to make sure that each letter is straight, centered and spaced correctly.
After the letters are spaced as you like them, click on the "Combine Stitch Files" icon on the toolbar. It is the fifth icon from the left. When prompted, click "yes" to continue.
3. Your stitch files are now combined into one stitch file. You can save it and put it into your machine for stitching.
Instructions for merging designs together vary from software program to software program, so be sure to refer to your program's instruction manual to find the steps for merging. If you don't have a software program to merge designs together, then you can stitch the letters/characters one by one to form a word or monogram.