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Tips for Working with
Alphabets |
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The Embroidery Library has 90 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.
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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.
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. |
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2. In Editor mode, choose file and
merge. Click on file and merge again,
and select the third monogram letter. |
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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 youre ready to put it into your machine
and embroider! |
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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. |
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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. |
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3. Your stitch
files are now combined into one stitch file.
You can save it and put it into your machine
for stitching. |
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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. |