Little letters and little words. The backbone of a good digitizer? Embroidery is the art of illusion and by that we need to understand that just because an illustration is designed a certain way doesn’t mean that is the way to digitize it. We create the illusion that it is a match to the original by making subtle changes to the design to make it work with the medium of thread. Little letters are a perfect example of that.  Keyboard fonts all have a recommended size for which they were created. This can be easily verified by going into the help menu and fonts and looking at the font you are using. It will provide the maximum and minimum size recommended.

I don’t know about your clients but mine are always asking for more! I have found that the thing to check is the stitch length and the negative space. The negative space is the openings in letters. Realizing that it is the illusion that I’m creating on small letters sometimes things need to change. For example a P we can drop the centre bar down to open the space inside the P. Although that may not be technically correct, visually you can’t tell the difference. It sure shows if the space closes up and you are left with a blob or pulled open a hole. The two P's below are the same width but the one showing the stitches has been accomodated for embroidery. I have found that any letters that have negative spaces like R’ A’ B’P’ are helped by cheating on the letter. I like to think of it as making the letters more embroidery friendly.

I usually suggest using uppercase letters when doing small sizes as well. If you think about it by creating a 4mm height letter and doing a lowercase ‘a’ you need 3 bars of stitching and two open spaces. That’s a lot to cram into 4mm height and if I don’t have to it’s better to avoid. Another trick I have found helps with small letters is to adjust the way the letters open out. For example a C has the satin stitch curving back towards the middle on its open side. On small letters if it curves more open it’s less likely to close up and look like an O. This helps to solve two problems, one opening up the negative space the other equally important is it facilitates the turning of the stitches through a tight curve.

I find these small adjustments will make the difference between a letter being visually recognized instead of being a blob of stitches. Sometimes there just isn’t enough space to fit things. I will go into the word and shorten the bars on the E’s F’s T’s and L’s. This will also give me the space I need to open up the M’s. I find that helps them be more legible.

These were the things that I was taught in the days when digitizing required a draft being drawn 6x larger than the final embroidery design. Those lettering lessons were welled learned when you had to draw them over and over and I guess that’s the ABC’s of small BLOCK letters!

The Embroidery Dinosaur

Beverley Field

artembbc@shaw.ca