How to Make Embroidered Tags

I love making these reusable gifts tags. When Christmas is over this year, I’ll save the tags again for next year. (If I put them on gifts for others I hope they use them as a bookmark.) They sure brighten up otherwise dull-looking wrapped presents for my kiddos.

You will be using a font that is approximately 1” tall. I like adding an extra little mini Christmas picture as well. You can buy them here.

I can make 4 tags at a time in my large 5”x10” hoop. Arrange all your names and designs in your hoop and stitch.

Once I stitch my designs (I used linen fabric and a very stiff tear away stabilizer) I cut them out into rectangles using regular scissors or your rotary cutter and back them with another piece of linen. I chose not to remove the stabilizer so that the tags would stay firm. Pin your front and back piece together and using pinking shears, cut only the edge that will hold the ribbon tie. For my gift tags, that’s the left side, as seen below.

Cut a piece of 10” ribbon, fold in half, and place the folded part between the pinked edges of the two layers of fabric. Sew all the around the tag. Then pink the other 3 edges close to the stitching—but don’t cut the stitching.

All done, not bad for 5 minutes of sewing, huh?'

The tag below feature my scribbled cursive alphabet. I chose not to make a few tags specific to Christmas so that my children can use then as bookmarks after they open their gifts.

The tag below features the Riverside Alphabet and the reindeer design.

Great to personalize Christmas stockings as well:

Merry Christmas!

Aquarelle Fonts

I love digitizing fonts for embroidery. Why? Because the ones that come with most embroidery software programs are real snoozers. I mean, they are usually boring and juvenile. So I search out cool fonts online, download them, and digitize them.
This is my latest embroidery font for sale, it’s called Aquarelle or in some places, Passions Conflict. The latter is sure a sappy name. (Y0u can download this true type font by clicking here.)

I am super duper careful when selling my digitized fonts to call them alphabets, and not fonts. Why? Because each letter has to be sold individually. To spell the above name, ‘Maren’, you have to open 5 files—M-A-R-E-N and use appropriate software to combine them into a pleasing pattern, save the file, and then send that file to your embroidery machine via USB drive or connected cables. I’ve had MANY customers buy my “alphabets” and then quickly email me and ask how they install that font in their software so that they can just type the word “Maren” on their keyboard, and voila, it will come up! I tell them, it’s impossible unless you buy software that costs close to a bazillion dollars to digitize any true type font.  Still, I get those emails whether I call it a ‘font’ or an ‘alphabet’.
You can skip this paragraph if you want, but I’m gonna tell you what is involved in digitizing a font. First, you open the lowercaes letter “a”.  Then you make it 1” tall, then you watch an animation of it being ‘stitched out’ in case the computer’s default is something really wacky. I would say 5% of the time it is wacky, which means I have to completely re-draw the letter myself, which takes a while. Then I save this file as “lowercase letter a  aquarelle”. Then you’ll do this 25 more times for the rest of the alphabet. Then 26 more times for the uppercase letters. Then you’ll repeat the 2 more times for 2” sizes and 3” sizes. In the end, you’ll have digitized 156 files. This takes hours. Then I have to sew up some samples, make any necessary tweaking to the digital files, photograph my samples, and edit the photos.
Now it’s time to convert these 156 files from Bernina’s proprietary file exentions of .ART so that all other machine users can use them. I sell in .ART, .DST, .HUS, .JEF, .PES, .SEW, .VIP, and .VP3.
Phew, I’m tired just typing it. It usually takes me a week or two to do all this. And then I sell the digitized files for cheap—llike $5.75 cheap. (It’s all about having a high turnover and low profit margin baby.  At least that’s what they tell ya the first day of business school in college) Some alphabets I have sold over 200 times….some only 10 times. I hate it when the latter happens.

Either way, I love how this Aquarelle font alphabet turned out. The above pillow is for a teenage girl….I hope it’s grown up enough for her, but still uber cool. The below pillow also used the Aquarelle font….this pillow is now in a local furniture shop for sale here in Utah Valley. I hope it finds a good home.

Christmas Stockings

Christmas Stockings, originally uploaded by meringuedesigns.

Hooray! This was the year to make us all matching Christmas stockings. I embroidered our names in Scriptina font and digitized a few designs--mittens, aluminum trees, and snowmen--to adorn the fronts. Of course, I had to include linen to bring them all together. The front of each is a patchwork of fabrics. layered with cotton batting and muslin, then quilted. The back is simply a piece of 100% linen and the lining is natural muslin. I'm smiling right now at actually having done some Christmas sewing!

Hallie hates her (surprise) because I used a cursive font. She is afraid she won't know which one is hers. "I'm only 5! I can't read cursive!" No matter what I said, nothing could assuage her fears. But that's life as usual in this house--someone is always mad and I can never make everyone happy. Too bad Tootse, 'cause I like 'em and they're staying.

Fun Fonts

monogram pillow 003, originally uploaded by meringuedesigns.

Can you guess what font this is? It's a Disney font called Waltograph. Kind of cute, huh? I made two of these for a client's teenage daughter. Her mom works for anthropologie. (color me jealous) and commissioned these pillows to go with her daughter's new bedding. Lucky girl!