ImagesMagUK_September_2020

in a motto as one course of thread. Start at one end of the word and draw, with your lines aiming to hit the outside edges of the lettering you are using as a guide, tracing the letters partially and moving from one to the next at the closest point of connection until you reach the end of the word. Then, without breaking the line of straight stitching, continue to trace the letters and return back to your origin point, carefully covering each ‘line’ in the lettering only twice. This will ensure that the thickness of the lines in your lettering is uniform. Note: this looks best when the straight stitch text is darker than the background on which it will be stitched; light colours on dark backgrounds can leave your text looking broken and pebbled. One further note of caution is to avoid lines in the straight stitch text aligning with the angle of any filled embroidery underneath them. This parallel alignment can cause lines in the text to ‘sink’ into the underlying fill. Going with the flow Another frequent issue seen with banner text, even when it is large enough for conventional satin- stitch lettering, is a mismatch in path or placement. Frequently, the banner itself has a complex shape, following the bottom of the shield to which it is attached, having an oval rather than a round path, or being asymmetrical in some fashion. Embroiderers looking to save time in digitising may use keyboard lettering with standard transformations, like circular paths, or may be less than careful about vertical alignment, both of which can leave the text off-course, with too much space between border and text on one side and not enough on the other, or poorly tracking the shape of the banner. Though the method of execution can change depending on your software tools, the first thing to do is avoid using standard, symmetrical circle or bridge text unless your banner or design is truly perfectly round. Consider using either a baseline or path-based version of the text and drawing your own contour that properly follows the border of the banner. For less complicated banners where the individual letters can easily rotate on the path without looking cluttered, this is a fairly simple fix. For those with software that can handle true envelope warping, even On light materials, such as this thin nylon bag or the materials used for wicking sport shirts, a pre-stitched appliqué-style satin-stitch attached patch can allow for heavily filled emblems without adding the bulk and distortion of direct embroidery When adding text to a banner, many embroiderers will use keyboard fonts, but some will employ a standard circular text arc or other method that doesn’t properly track the shape of the banner. (Top) Notice the uneven spacing due to the oval shape of the banner as well as the odd tension at the sides where the tilt of the lettering following the arc leaves gaps in the overall coverage at the top of each side of the text. While some software has a simple ‘bridge’ warp that allows for a curve to the topline and baseline, many are not editable, meaning they will have a circular segment for the top and bottom of the warped text. (Above) The bottom text has a true custom envelope shape that is a perfect contour of the oval section of this banner, making all edges of the text element evenly spaced to the banner’s border In digitising manual or straight-stitch lettering, you make two passes over any line in the letterforms. In this image, I’ve separated the first pass that runs from the beginning of the text at the left side out to the far right end of the text, taking the most expedient route. The second line shows the path from the endpoint back to the origin, tracing once more over the existing lines and twice over any lines that haven’t yet been covered, ending at the origin point. This leaves you with the finished piece on the bottom line, with each line of a perfectly equal thickness due to every line being composed of precisely two passes of stitches Consider removing or reducing details; customers aren’t usually counting leaves on trees... KB TIPS & TECHNIQUES www.images-magazine.com 76 images SEPTEMBER 2020