Embossed Monograms
While surfing around the web looking for ideas to inspire me on sewing for our upcoming new home, I ran across several forums and web sites displaying “embossed monograms” and it was love at first site. I knew those would be perfect for our bathroom towels, but I wanted to digitize my own rather than purchase them.
I’m not sure if this is how the “pros” are doing it or not, but I believe the end results are the same. Many thanks to Jeanette Selleck for brainstorming through this with me, and I hope this is useful to anyone who wishes to try this method.
I will be using the Bernina Embroidery Software Designer Plus version 5 for this pictorial.
Figure 1Click Ctrl+N to start a new file. For this example, choose the Circle/Oval tool and create an oval. (Figure 1) I displayed the large oval hoop as my reference, but you can resize the motif when you’re finished.
The oval is filled by default. Click on the Select tool, select the oval and then at the bottom of the screen on the left side, click on the Outline tool and change it to triple stitch. Now click on Fill tool next to the Outline tool, and change it to Lacework. Why the double step? I seem to have a glitch, and if I don’t make the oval an outline first, the Lacework isn’t an option in the Fill tool. If yours let you skip the Outline tool, all the better. ***Update from Jeanette (What you can do to avoid that step is to select your oval and then just just click on the lacework symbol on the left tool bar. It will go automatically to lacework and then you can change the object properties of the lacework.)***
Figure 2Now open the Object properties and change the Column and Row Spacing to 0.10 (Figure 2). This makes your lacework a bit more dense so that your monogram will “pop”. By the way, I have my software set in inches, not millimeters… it makes a difference. You’ll have to adjust accordingly if you use the metric measurement.
Click okay. At this point I resized my oval to about 5 inches tall to make it easier to work with. Now press Ctrl+D to duplicate your oval, and drag the new 
Figure 3oval off to the right a bit. (Figure 3).
While it’s still selected, change the color, and then click on the Outline tool in the lower left corner of your screen, and change it to satin.
While the red oval is still selected, hold down your Ctrl key and select the green oval, then click on the Align Centers tool at the bottom of your screen. The red outline will snap perfectly into place over the green oval.
Figure 4 (Figure 4).
Click on the Lettering tool on the left side of the screen, click in the center of your oval, and type your letter of choice. Hit Enter.
Select the letter, open Object properties and click on the Lettering tab. Choose the font of your choice ( I used Greek 2). Click okay, and drag your Letter to a size that roughly fills the oval.
While the letter is still selected, hold the Ctrl key down and select the green oval, then once again click on the Align Centers tool at the bottom of the screen.
Figure 5Make sure you have your letter selected, then click on the Remove Overlaps tool on the left side of the screen. (Figure 5).
Press your Delete key. The letter will go away, leaving in its place the outline. Select the green oval. I find this easiest to do by choosing it from the Thread toolbar on the right. Click on Ctrl +D and again drag the duplicate over to the right. (This is merely so you can see what you’re doing, it isn’t necessary).
With the Duplicate image selected, click on the Outline tool at the bottom of the screen, and select Triple. Now click on Ctrl and the original green oval, then select the Align Centers tool at the bottom of the screen.
Your letter is nicely outlined now. If you want to add another border, select the red outlined oval click Ctrl +D to duplicate it. Drag it over to the right, change the color to something unused, and resize it a bit larger than the original. You can used the Scale up/down tool and right click it for a 20% increase in size.
Once again, while the duplicate oval is still selected, click on Ctrl + the red oval, and click on the Align Centers tool.
Now you need to arrange the stitch order. You can drag the colors over in color film bar. You’ll want the green oval with the lacework fill to stitch first, so drag it to the top. Next will be the outline green oval, then the inner satin border, and finally the outer satin border.
Figure 6For fun you can Select all (Ctrl +A) and choose one color, in order to visualize how it will actually look, (Figure 6) but you need to keep the colors separate so that they stitch out in the proper sequence.
That’s it, you’re done!
How was that for easy?
I will make another pictorial on doing embossed monograms with the Monogram Tool.
