Free Machine Embroidered Lettering Made Easy

[Music] hello i'm claire and today i'm going to show you how to do some lettering this is all free machine embroidered and it is actually quite easy to do so i'm going to give you some hints and tips on just what you need to do to get started so if you like these videos please don't forget to hit the subscribe button and then you won't miss any that come up in the future here's the lettering and i've used a zigzag and a straight stitch to do this so i'm going to show you how you can do this as well and a lot of people say to me well have you done that free hand have you marked the fabric so i i did actually write a lovely lettering on the calico before i stitch this but this one i did do free hand but i think because it's my name i think i've probably had more practice writing that over the years so i'll show you what you can do on plain bit of calico you can actually write on the lettering that you want to use and there's different ways in which you can do that so there are fabric pens that disappear with water or disappear with time in the air but you probably have heard of a pen called a friction pen so this is what they look like and they can be found in the stationary section of either your supermarket or in a stationers so they are designed for using with sudoku and crosswords because they are a pen that rubs out so that's their you know main their origin if you like but people have discovered that they the ink disappears with heat which is great because they are also nice and fine so if you do want to write on calico you can do it quite finely like that and as i say with a quick iron they disappear there are other brands available because what it really is is an erasable pen so if you do see these out and about this is what they can do but there is a downside and i will share that with you on this piece of work i actually used friction pen and i changed my design completely and here i don't if you can see that mark has come back it would have been fine if i hadn't changed my mind and actually stitched over that line but because i've changed my design completely that mark has come back and you can now see it so just be mindful of that now also on this sample you can see some other lettering and that's been written on a organza ribbon so you might be thinking well hang on a minute claire how did you write on the organza ribbon because organza is quite tricky it's a bit slippery and there's another tip for that one so i'll show you what i did i've got a piece of tissue paper i like to use acid-free tissue it's nice and crispy and using a pencil you can write your lettering so in this instance it was time oops for tea when you do it think about how you would actually stitch this so that it's stitched in one going and not stopping starting so oops can't spell t there we go time for t it's a good guideline and i always try to make sure that they're spread out okay if they're too bunched up you will find that quite tricky to stitch and another little tip is when you've done some lettering like that if you fold it so that the last letter is on the first sorry the first letters on the last letter like that and put a crease down it you know where the middle of the lettering is so for positioning it's really handy you can then make sure that you've placed it in the right area so what i'll do is just pin that to the calico and the idea of using tissue is that you would stitch through the tissue tear the tissue away and then you are left with a lettering so let's take you over to the sewing machine and show you how this is done so i'm going to free machine embroider so the thread that i have got on the top and the bobbin is rayon 40 it's the madeira rayon 40 and i've i've got it in black just mainly really so that you can see what i'm doing and we're going to do free motion embroidery so we need a free machine embroidery foot or a free motion quilting foot so as i'm on a benina this is my foot 24 which is open toed and an open-toed embroidery foot is really good to see where you're going so i need to drop my teeth or lower my feed dogs so on this machine it's a button at the side so obviously check your manual and you can work out how to drop the teeth on your machine if you are unable to drop the teeth on your machine it may be that you can put a plate over them and in your bag of bits with your machine is a little plate so it's worth sticking out the manual and having a little check of what you've got so my teeth are down and my foot is on and i'm ready to free machine embroider so i've got my calico in a hoop and the best way to get started is to put your needle in the fabric and to bring your thread up through the fabric to start with and the reason that you do that is just so that it doesn't get tangled underneath and you know where it is unlike conventional sewing where you're sewing away from yourself with free machine embroidery you're going in all sorts of directions so you don't really want to get your thread tangled underneath so now this machine has what we call a needle up needle down button so i'm able to press the button the needle goes in the fabric and if i press it again it the needle comes up and i can pull up my bobbin thread now if you don't have that facility on your machine then just use the hand wheel to bring up your bobbin thread so that's how you do it and the best thing to do is then to pop the needle and back in the fabric before you start so this is set on straight stitch and with free machine embroidery your stitch length is determined by how fast you go with your foot and how fast you move the hoop because there are no teeth clamping the fabric in the same way as you do when you sew conventionally that's what's allowing us to move the hoop and everything but it is a bit confusing because you are actually in control of that stitch length and what can happen and it's really easy to do this you think oh i need the control i'm going to go slowly but you don't want to go too slowly because you end up with jerky stitches so let's see if i can put into practice what i'm talking about so i'm holding my two threads at the moment but i'm going to set off so i'm going to go quite quickly with my foot but move my hoop ever so slowly so i'm holding on to my hoop it depends how you want to hold on to your work you can have one hand on your work one hand on the side of the hoop i do suggest that you don't hang onto the hoop edges as if you're driving a bus because that can actually mean that you're pressing down and it's quite tricky to move your piece of work so try to relax those shoulders i know it's easier than easier said than done remember to breathe and you can stop at any time so off we go so if i set off hopefully um oh i haven't loaded my feed dog so sorry my my presser foot so if you lower the presser foot lever and off you go so once you've done a few stitches you can cut those ends off if you're worried about it coming undone you could go backwards and forwards a little bit but i'll just move those ends out of the way and so here we go so i'm just sewing and i'm moving my hoop really slowly so that i've got that control but i'm quite quickly with my foot so again when you get to the end if you're worried about it coming undone you can just go back over yourself a couple of stitches and that's you done and then if you literally uh bring the needle up and lift the presser foot lever up you're able to to cut that so you can cut that top and bottom so that's how quickly and easily you can actually do the lettering and i'm going to cut the bottom and now i'm going to have a go stitching over the tissue paper so let's just do that again so pop the needle through the tissue paper and the fabric bring up your bobbin thread so pull that up so again you've got both ends and you know where they are hang on to those pop your needle back in and you're ready to lower the presser foot and set off it's really easy to forget to lower the presser foot and the reason you do that is unlike conventional sewing where you're clamping the fabric because you're used to the the presser foot being up and down you probably just think oh it's fine it's up it's fine but if you don't do that what can happen well some machines will beep at you because they're clever enough to know that you shouldn't really be doing that if it doesn't beep at you and you set off you'll find that after a little while you'll get a bit of a bird's nest underneath and when i'm called over in class people say oh what have i done i've got this bird's nest and usually i'll say oh it's you've forgotten to put the presser foot lever down and you might set off and then think i've got the presser foot lever put it down and you might be all right you might have saved it in time but sometimes you haven't and you need to start again so don't forget to lower the presser foot and then you're able to go over this so so just sew through now with my tea i'm not connected to the rest of the lettering and it's a bit of a pain to actually stop pull out the thread cut it start again so i'll show you a little tip so bring the needle up out of the fabric lift up the presser foot lever so the tensioning mechanism isn't engaged and just move your thread put your finger in that thread there so that you're making a bit of a loop then manually go to where you want it to be pop your needle back in the fabric lower the presser foot and set off again and again just go through this and again you've got to where the f is so lift the needle up lift the presser foot just do that pop the needle back in where you want to be lower the presser foot and set off again kneel up lift up press the foot and do this there we go and then as i say you can just get back on yourself a little bit angle up lift up the presser foot and i'll show you why you did what you did so cut the thread top and bottom and then you are able to sort this out so these big loops just make it really easy to trim you can just do that and then take your pins out scratch it and you get those pesky bits of tissue paper i mean if you're doing this on again so then just perhaps not don't be as rough but you can do that quite easily and it comes away and of course you can use a pin to pick out the bits if it's easier if you can't like for example where that bit is there there we are how easy so that's all good and i just want to show you there we are so you can see some other way of marking the calico so that's all done with straight stitch but of course you can actually do some lettering in a zigzag so let me show you what you do so set your machine to zigzag and that will actually determine how wide you can zigzag so i'm going to set it to the widest setting so i'm going as wide as i can and just check when you do set it to zigzag that you are not going to hit your machine embroidery foot as i say some machines are clever enough so that when you've put that particular foot on and told the machine you've got that foot on it won't let you do any other kind of stitch if it won't work but i know if you buy a universal foot and you've just set your machine just do a little double check as you don't really want to break a needle so let's just come down here actually and do it on this plain bit of calico so again put your needle in the fabric bring up the bobbin thread and pop your needle back in now lower your presser foot so we've got it on zigzag so the machine is going to go from side to side but how close those stitches are again depends on you and how quickly or slowly you move your hoop so because we want to create a satin stitch i'm going to need to move my hoop quite slowly but i must make sure i move it enough because if i don't move it and i over stitch on the same spot there's a risk of you actually breaking a needle uh or breaking your thread so i've just got a size 80 needle in and it's fine for sewing through the calico so off we go you get the idea of what i'm doing and you're getting that nice lettering but i want to give you a tip actually i just want to show you how you can get the lettering to look a little bit better a bit more italic if you like when you see my other sample you can see that my clair is written and you can see it actually it's a little bit more italic so i want to show you how you can do that so let me just prepare the machine and i'll show you how it's done so i'm going to show you how you can achieve a more italic look to your lettering and what i've done is i've lifted my machine up of the horn cabinet back onto the the table if you like and i've put it at right hand well sort of 45 degree angle if you look um like that because when you write with an italic pen you hold the pen in a certain way so that you can get that italic lettering now of course when you're doing your zigzag and you've got the machine in front of you the zigzag is literally going from side to side so i'm trying to change the angle of my zigzag and the best way to do that is just to to move the angle of your machine all right so although it is is positioned like that i'm going to put the hoop in it like this and right still from side to side but hopefully that will give me a more italic look to my lettering so this is what i'm going to do so give yourself plenty of space in the hoop so thankfully i'm just called claire not stephanie i haven't got a really long name but if i start here i should be fine for for going along so just work out where you want to write um just work out and i'm literally going to write my name like that okay so again needle in the fabric and pull up your bobbin thread to start and pop the needle in lower the presser foot and go for it so again once you've done a few stitches you can actually cut the ends and you can set off oops so now i just wobbled with my e that's not the best e but uh let me just show you it's more at an angle with the lettering and so you can just go back and do the eye yeah sorry i wobbled a bit there and where i was a bit hasty we've got a bit of a gap it's quite good when you see that so you know what's gone wrong when you don't get quite the look that you want but you can see the angle is is quite good and it just it's just really nice and raised this is a good way of doing that and i just want to show you when you just move that out the way how nice when you use variegated thread that's really quite nice isn't it so you don't need a fancy sewing machine when you can do this freehand and it's just zigzag so i hope you liked seeing that today and if you've got any questions please comment down below and hopefully i'll be able to answer you i'll be doing some other hints and tips about lettering and what you can do as well but i just thought i'd start with a few of the basics to get you going and some of you may have spotted i'm wearing the necklace that i made the other day so this is the necklace that's i've made using just little spools that i've wrapped my own thread round and these are charms that you can pick up quite easily so it's something i've been meaning to do for ages and ages and finally got around to it the other day anyway if you've liked today's video please give me the thumbs up and look forward to seeing you again soon so thanks ever so much for watching bye

Channel: Claire Muir Free Machine Embroidery

Views: 34,006

Rating: 4.9363956 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, free machine embroidery, free motion embroidery, Claire Muir, Claire Muir Textiles, beginners guide to embroidered lettering, Madeira Thread, Bernina 550, embroidery workshops, itallic lettering, embroidered words, free machine lettering, embroidered letters, Denman Tutor, textile art

Id: otsRTI51wqg

Length: 22min 44sec (1364 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 30 2020