Alphabet Designs

If you are like most home embroiderers, you have probably collected some beautiful, fanciful alphabets. These are individual designs. You cannot plug them into your software to work the way built-in fonts do. You combine them the same way you combine other embroidery designs using your embroidery software. But what do you use them for?

The most obvious choice is to embroider initials, either a single letter or a trio of letters, on a towel, scarf, tote bag, shirt or book cover. You can use a very decorative letter for the beginning of a name, followed by simpler letters to spell out the rest of the name (along the lines of medieval illuminated manuscripts).

Create a banner for a special event using large, decorative letters. Make an ABC quilt or cloth ABC book, pairing each letter with a design whose name begins with that letter. Embroider flashcards with a design on one side and the beginning letter on the other side.

Embroider a letter on felt, add another layer of felt, stitch the layers together in a circle, trim just outside the stitching and glue a magnet on the back. You now have a refrigerator magnet. Create an entire set, with multiples of the most common letters, and you can use the magnets to spell out messages.

Next issue: embroidery for craft shows

from Mary Jane Allen of Perfect Little Stitches

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NEW TOWA
Bobbin Tension Gauge

This tension gauge measures
the amount of tension placed on
the bobbin thread. Unravel the
mystery of adjusting the bobbin
tension. By measuring and
recording where the ideal tension
setting is for various threads, you
can quickly adjust the tension as
you switch from thread to thread.