Scarves

Last year my sister made a bunch of scarves for everyone using a strip of fleece and embroidering their initials on the end--actually, I embroidered an awful lot of scarves for my sister. Anyhow, I got to do my own and I decided to do something a little different. My sister did not have the Version 6.0 upgrade yet, so I did this with version 4.0 of the software--it would have been much easier with the new software. It also might have been easier if I had a better understanding of the program. I decided to use my initials in lower case and then encased them in a circle. Using the remove overlap feature, I cut out the initials and then deleted the initials leaving the area blank. I wanted an outline around the circle and the letters, so I duplicated the circle with the initials cutout and changed it from a fill to an outline. The first one did not outline the initials because they were on the inside of the circle. If I hadn't deleted the initials I could have selected each initial and changed it to an outline, but instead I took a much more difficult route--I enlarged and positioned the initials so that each letter just barely broke the circle. I t is probably difficult to see, but by doing this, the outline went into each initial. If you look hard enough you might be able to see where the "f" breaks on the lower left, the "j" breaks at the bottom, and the "k" breaks on the bottom right. I added my favorite fancy fill--rustic ice--and decided to embroider using a green tone so that it would be less obvious and more "artistic". OK, that part didn't work out so well, but I still like it.

This year I decided I would make some scarves for some friends and their kids. For their oldest daughter I used my sister's new favorite font--Curlz MT. I added a ladybug that I copied from another design. It had flowers and other stuff, but I just wanted a ladybug. When she was born I helped them paint the baby room (for the fourth time I think--it was a guest room, their oldest son's room, their second's room, and then their daughter). The walls were painted pink with random white squares that were about 1 foot square. We painted flowers in most of the squares, but my friend Roland painted a ladybug in one of the more prominent. He then call her bug when she was a little baby. I thought the adding of the ladybug would make her Mom and Dad sentimental. I am not so excited about my choice of gray for the spots and the outline. On a black scarf I wasn't sure what to do, but you can still see it is a ladybug.

For the youngest I once again used Curlz MT and added a butterfly. Again I copied it from another design--I think it actually had a little bear and several butterflies. For some reason Roland still calls her bug as a pet name. The picture is a little washed out, but the color is a dark lilac that really stands out on the black scarf.

For my friend's wife I added all the initials--again using the Curlz MT font. I also used a variegated thread which I think makes the initials really cool. The monogramming function in the DesignerPlus Version 6.0 worked really well, but left the middle initial a little smaller than I liked. I was able to select the middle initial and make it bigger while maintaining the overall monogram. This feature was not nearly as robust in Version 4.0 and is even available in EditorPlus V6.0.

For the boys I wanted to also add something to the initial. My friends live in Platte City which is just north of Kansas City. Since it is a small town all the teams for the different schools have the same mascot, which is a pirate. I found a picture of the pirate and did my best to develop an outline of the pirate to add to the initial. The colors of the school are black and orange, so I decided to use orange thread for the pirate. Looking at the picture I am a little disappointed as the design looks so much better in real life.

For the younger son, I used the same pirate outline as an embellishment to the initial. Also, I used a block university font, which I think fits a young man very well. Since I was afraid the long threads might get snagged, I used the Satin Special fill. The Satin fill would have tried to make one long stitch across the letter, Satin Special breaks it up into smaller stitches with the stitch points interwoven to reduce the line pattern. You still get a little bit of a pattern, but again, in real life it is not as pronounced as it looks in the picture.

The last scarf was for Roland. I used an Old English font and put all three initials. For Rebecca I used her last initial in the center and made it bigger which is a very popular style. For Roland I left this initials all the same size and put them first, middle, last order. The initials turned out a little smaller than I wanted, but for a man I figured it would be OK. I now think I should have made the font a little simpler and rotated the design by 90 degrees. I may try that next time I do a scarf.

We also made a scarf for my older sister's granddaughter Noel, but alas we forgot to take a picture. It was very cute and we used the Secret Garden font that comes with the software--all the capital letters are a three color design with little flowers. All the other fonts used were TrueType fonts that were imported into the software. Unfortunately, the EditorPlus software does not allow you to import the TrueType fonts.

To finish off the scarves my sister sews a line at each end and cuts a fringe up to the sewn line. She confessed this year that she sews the line to give her students something to do in her sewing classes.