Embroidery
Look at how neat my lines are! And guess what? My little Portrait machine did most of the work for me!
This does require a tiny bit of work with the computer, but then you have perfectly even stitches every time.
First you will have to download two fonts:
Learning Curve Pro Dashed (free for personal use)
KG Primary Dots (free for personal use)
Install them on your computer by unzipping and then dragging them to the font folder, and then restart Studio if you have it open so that the fonts can load. Next you want to write the words that you want to stitch, and then select one of the two fonts depending if you want cursive or print. Make the words big.
I think the size that I have them here (7.5 inches across) is about as small as you could make it. Right-click the word and click on Convert to Path.
Right-click again and Ungroup the words, and then right-click and Release Compound Path.
You want to have a tiny square around every little dot or dash. This is the slightly time consuming part- hold the Shift key while selecting every other dot, and then delete them. Or you can select two to delete between every one that you leave. You can also individually adjust each dot if the deleting of every other dot leaves the letter a little wonky.
Ideally, you want each dot to be about 0.050 inches, and have them spaced between 1/8 and 3/8 inches apart. This depends on how long you want each stitch to be. Resize the word to what size you want and then do an offset (or internal offset) to make the dots 0.050 in.
Once you’re happy with your word, just send it through your cutting machine while you go off and do something else. Or just watch it do it’s magic. When finished all you have to do it pull it off the mat (then take a dry rough sponge to it to clean off the dots) and stitch through the holes in your paper. This is fantastic if you’re doing multiples of something, or if you want to have really even stitch lines. You can even get every letter just the way you like it and save it to your library so you don’t have to do the deleting every time. Just make sure to group each letter after deleting the extra dots.
When you’re ready to make a word, just open the file from the library, delete the characters you don’t need, duplicate the ones you need more than one of, and arrange them to spell your word. Then use Studio’s alignment tool to evenly space the letters and make them all on one line.
This isn’t even the best part!
You can do this with shapes too! Pick or draw a shape that you want to embroider. Next, open the text tool and type in periods with a space between them (. . . . . . ). Make the font Times New Roman and the size 33. Click the dots so the green box appears, and then click drag the little circle on the right of the box to the shape until it snaps to the shape. It is better explained in this Silhouette School Tutorial. Keep typing the dots and spaces until your shape is completed. Next, convert to path and ungroup the text, so you can individually adjust each point. Then delete the original path and you have a dot path for stitching! I am giving this star that I just made as a freebie ;).
Star Embroidery Pattern
Download
xoxo
-A
