Preschool Graduation!

Thumbs up, this boy is almost done with preschool!!

Tonight night was Dashiell's preschool program, and included in that was a brief graduation ceremony for the VPK classes. In honor of that, I made him this shirt, very similar to the one I made Annaliese five years ago.

The monogram is Five Star Font's Diploma~Graduation Monogram. The rest of the text uses the font “Hog Bold HMK” which is the font from the school logo on their t-shirts and bags.

Oh boy, does this kid have personality! He was quite entertaining to watch tonight from start to finish! Not a shy bone in his body... it helped keep me from getting super sentimental and emotional at the program because I was laughing. Or mouthing "STAND STILL!" ;)

It wasn't until I was home comparing pictures that I got teary... Isn't this amazing? They sure do look alike!
We love Timberlane Preschool!!

Baby gift for Wilder

I recently made this gift set for friends of ours that had a second little boy:

I made matching shirts for Wilder and his big brother using I2S Box Font, and added their names with Girls Have Secrets. You know what my secret is? This font is great for boys! Ha!

I couldn't decide if I should outline the letter in red and do name in blue, or vice versa. Decided to do one of each!

For the burp cloth I used this little monster design (from The Applique Club) and added his name with Behind These Hazel Eyes:

and the bib... well like Shepherd's bib when he was a baby, it is a bit of an inside joke from one dad to another. Both my husband and Wilder's dad enjoy James Bond movies (they record a podcast together in fact). This came up as a joke and had to be made into a reality.

This project was one where BX files saved the day! Can you imagine merging all this letter by letter, especially when you weren't sure what font to use in the first place?! I typed the phrase in Embrilliance, scrolled through several different fonts to decide which one I wanted to use (Covered by Your Grace), then once I picked it, I save the design as a PES file. Then I opened in Embird to get it sized exactly as I wanted (kept height the same but squashed the width to fit on the bib) and adjusted the pull compensation to thicken up the letters to stitch better on the terry bib. So fast and came out perfect!

You can see the little cutie wearing the bib on Tumblr

Monogramming for myself!

Big news at The Itch 2 Stitch... Fancy Circle has had a facelift! Lots of changes to the files, but the two most significant changes were altering the size of the right letters, and adjusting the fill settings for the large sizes. I'm super excited about it and was anxious to put it to use! I monogrammed a couple items for myself to show the differences between the 4.5" and 5.5" sizes. I used the 4.5" size on this bag sitting in my stash. At this size the font is completely satin stitch!! (Previously there were small sections of the center letter that had a split satin stitch.)

Isn't it gorgeous?!

For one of my coverups I used the 5.5" size. It features a split satin for most of the letter.

Equally pretty!

I've got a sweatshirt waiting for a jumbo monogram... I might try a double hooping project using the 6.5" size! We shall see... ;)

SODA-lighted you were my teacher! (Take 3)

For the last two years I've made can koozies for teacher appreciation week, and they have been so well received I did it again:

This year I used I2S Fancy Circle Small (the 2.5" size) on the koozies. The little SODA-lighted tag is a free printable I found last year on the Tammy Mitchell Designs blog. I love the little play on words sort of appreciation gifts. :)
Ms. Snyder is a big Phillies baseball fan, so I used blue and red and baseball ribbon:

 For Mrs. Williams I used this cute owl ribbon that has been in my stash forever waiting to be used on a Springwood Owl project, and paired it with a pink koozie:

 They were a hit!

Home is where your mom is

For Mother's Day this year I made cards for our moms:

I just love this "HOME is where your MOM is" design from I2S. And I love the sentiment! Even though we have lived in FL for nearly nine years, Central IL will always be home. My in-laws are still living in the same house they were in when my husband and I started dating, and that quickly became a second home to me. And although my parents moved out of state after retirement, their new house feels like home to me none-the-less... because MOM is there!

To attach the designs to notecards, I did the following:

-- I hooped tearaway and used spray adhesive to secure my woven fabric to the stabilizer.

-- I created a rectangle the size of the notecard and used that as my tackdown stitch (I actually put two in my 6x10 hoop)

-- Then I stitched out the design in the center of that rectangle.

--I removed the hoop from the machine and taped the notecard to the backside of the hoop inside the stitched rectangle.
--Then I stitched a triple bean stitch rectangle that was inside the outer rectangle by 1/4".

--I removed the stabilizer, trimmed the fabric to be the size of the notecard, and then frayed the edges.

I've used a similar technique before on other cards.

C is for Cherri!

This week was teacher appreciation week at our preschool, and as our gift to Ms Cherri I appliqued one more apron! We had done a sock monkey with a pumpkin for fall, and then a sock monkey with a snowman for winter, so this time I made a general one that could be worn the rest of the school year: C is for Cherri!

I like how this turned out! The C applique is from DBJJ's Sock Monkey Alphabet and I added the text with their newest font, Ruby.

Baby Gift for Twin Girls

My original primary role as an I2S assistant is customer service, but I do some test stitching on occasion, primarily 4x4 designs that I like to put on baby items. When the I2S released these two (oh... last fall), I knew I had an upcoming baby gift for expectant twins, so I used the same thread colors to make this set:

Aren't they cute? The first is I Love You to the Moon and Back

And the second is I Love You a Bushel and a Peck (the larger sizes have more text)

Once the babies were born, I made this bib set, using the I2S Whoo's Who design, adding their names with Behind These Hazel Eyes.

The Newest Owl in our family

Oh dear, the time has come. Kindergarten Orientation was today!!! ACK!

When I told Dashiell about the upcoming meeting I asked if he wanted anything special to wear and he said, "Yes! An owl shirt!" (our school mascot if you are a new blog reader.) Silently inside I shouted, "YES!" because I have had one picked out, purchased, and sitting in my design stash waiting for this day. I used Pick & Stitch's Bean Stitch Boy Owl design.

 I love the look of her bean stitch design, hoping this style will extend the life of Dashiell wearing applique shirts.

When I showed Dashiell the design, he was concerned about the eyes being different sizes. I did NOT want him to refuse this owl, so I told him "the owl is making this face and saying, 'what's kindergarten all about?'" Then he was totally on board. :) He helped me pick fabrics from my brown and turquoise stash, and then I got to work.
Here he is, saying, "What's Kindergarten all about?!" This is the one and only snap he let me take before leaving.

Whoooooo's ready for kindergarten?! Well this boy is. Not so sure about momma though...

What I've been up to for the last few months...

Seven years ago today my in-laws arrived for a visit with an embroidery machine in hand for me. Who knew that gift would be a life changing thing?! There is no way I could have predicted being where I am today. I've loved the adventure of the last seven years! I've shared my entire journey here, but I've been so busy on a big fun project for the last couple months that I haven't taken time to blog about it.

I love fonts. I love using a variety of fonts! I love it so much I even stitched it! Ha!

If you've read my blog though the years, this love of fonts is no surprise to you. :) You know how ecstatic I was to win a subscription to 8CP way back in 2009, how I worked on font images for the 8CP font CD, how I have tried to use a huge variety of those fonts through the years. If you have interacted with me in embroidery and applique groups, you know I have an unusual visual memory and can recognize digitized fonts pretty well. I get tagged in font questions often, and honestly it bugs me if I don't know the answer right away. Ha! Some have even named me the "Font Queen" which frankly I find kinda silly.

BUT after my last few months, I just might accept that title!

Last August I started working for The Itch 2 Stitch, initially just to help answer emails. We got requests for BX format (whatever that was), and I copy and pasted our standard response, that Cristy would not be adding BX format to her fonts.

I finally decided on my own to do a bit of research. The Embrilliance website asks for bloggers to contact them, so as Stitched by Janay, I did. Surprisingly they responded right away and gave me the tools I needed to explore. By that I mean they gave me Embrilliance Essentials AND AlphaTricks.... BUT I didn't install the software for MONTHS. Just got too busy to take on something new. Can you believe that? Totally kicking myself.

Once I got through the holidays and settled into a new routine for 2014, I decided to look into it again. After I played with AlphaTricks for, oh, 10 minutes?! I was enchanted with what I saw, how easy it was to use, and I asked Cristy if she wanted me to run forward with it. We did further research, and then I worked non-stop creating and testing and prepping for launch of adding the BX files to our fonts. 

There is really no way to describe the sheer giddiness I have felt over all of this. So I wanted to make a BIG deal about our adding the BX files to the fonts. Jolson's has had BX format for about a year. This isn't overwhelmingly new. I remember reading his first newsletter. I don't know if I was skeptical or thought it was too good to be true or what, but I completely ignored it. Me. "Font Queen" Janay. I ignored it. 

I chose to make how-to videos for our I2S customers because I didn't buy into it when Jolson's launched. And I completely regret as someone who does custom embroidery that I didn't pay attention until this year. So I made the videos to help out my fellow embroiderers. And I can't seem to stop! My head is swimming with ideas. It's like I've found a new calling :) 
This is the first video in the playlist. Checkout the awesomeness of being able to TYPE digitized fonts instead of merging letter by letter!

This weekend I posted a big BX FAQ in an applique group I am a part of. I thought I should go ahead and post it on my blog, too! So here you go...

Janay's BX FAQ

BX is not a machine format like PES or JEF.
BX is a software installer file used with embroidery programs made by BriTon Leap (Embrilliance Essentials, Embrilliance AlphaTricks, Designer’s Gallery EmbroideryWorks, etc).
Basically a BX file maps a pre-digitized font to the keyboard so you can type text and save as an embroidery design instead of merging and manually arranging individual letters in your software. Cool, huh?!

History:
About a year ago Embrilliance released a new piece of software called AlphaTricks. You can purchase this as a stand alone program and map any predigitized font you own to the keyboard, then use it's functions to type and quickly edit text designs (including respacing the automatic kerning, curving, resizing, and more). They also created the extension .BX so that digitizers could offer their fonts pre-mapped to AlphaTricks users. A couple of digitizers offered the BX format early on, and since March several more have started updating their fonts to include BX files.

What most people may not realize though is that you can install the Express version of Embrilliance and use digitizers' BX files for free. Yes! FREE!

Download and install the full software package from Embrilliance. (NOT the demo, but the FULL program). It is available for Mac and Windows:
http://embrilliance.com/downloads

When you launch the program it will ask for serials numbers. If you have not purchased Essentials, AlphaTricks, or any of their other programs, you have nothing to enter. Simply click DONE. It will say you are running in Express Mode, and all you can do is use digitizers' BX files. That's cool, no complaints because it is FREE!

Then you will need to install the BX files provided by the digitizer. Please note that you cannot install BX files while they are sitting in a zip file. You must extract the files first, then you can install by either double-clicking a BX file (which will install and and launch the program) or drag and drop them into the workspace of Embrilliance (can select multiple bx files to install at once). If you don't know how to extract a zip, in Windows you should be able to right click and select "Extract All". Alternatively, you could drag the BX files out of the zip to your desktop, then drag them into Embrilliance.

IF you want to resize text or merge text with an applique design, you won't be able to do that solely with the free Embrilliance Express version. You will need to do one of two things:
--Purchase Essentials and do it all in one program
--Type and save your name in Express. Then using the editing software you already own, open your applique and merge in the name file and keep editing there. It will likely be faster than merging individual letter files!

Each digitizer will include directions for using the BX files, most likely as a pdf in the zip with your font.

Want to see it in action? These videos walk you through installing and using BX files. Everything shown in videos 1-7 can be done with the FREE version. (I used I2S fonts, but the same steps apply for any digitizers' BX files.)
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudPni1FqKxG98Mh0xNYUs7EZcAGxe3sG

• Video 1 is a brief overview of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z94b5Oec-JE
• Video 2 shows how quickly you can preview a name in multiple fonts, as well as some editing tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSMp0n7d3Ag
• Video 3 shows editing features of multi-line text designs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkJvqL7kcb8
• Video 4 shows how to use the circular text function: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgJWHh2O-e4
• Video 5 shows how to use bx files for fonts mapped as 2-letter and 3-letter monograms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4rEsOrLiBc
• Video 6 shows how to create a three-letter monogram for an alphabet mapped with upper and lowercase letters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZncWTDe1PsM
• Video 7 shows how to combine multiple fonts in one embroidery design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwvioeoCGlY
•  More videos to come!

Have fun NOT merging!!!