Keyfob Digitzing with StitchArtist - 3 ways to create "bubble shaped" name keyfobs

hello this is lisa so bubbles and in this video i'd like to talk to you about creating key fobs in a brilliant stitch artist you know the kind that are so popular with a name and a design maybe and a cloud-like outline stitched around them all you really need to create these is in brilliant stitch artist and yes you can do this in stitch artist level one however unless you have essentials any stitch file or bx font that you use can't be resized that's the beauty of essentials and because changing sizes and adjusting lettering is a key customizing component we are going to assume that you also have essentials the software part of this video is going to show you a couple of ways to create this project using just stitch artist level one and of course essentials for those of you that also have enthusiasts i will show you a shortcut using the fabulous knock down function of this enthusiast who knew it could use something other than beautifully flattened stitches on knapp fabric i will wrap up the software portion with an alternate way to create the cloud-shaped object using the graphical operators of stitch artist level 3. be sure to watch through to the end as i will wrap up this video with some stitching steps tips and tricks at the machine be sure to check out the video description for links to resources our first step is to create our name that is going to be used in our key fob if you are going to be using designs or emerging files you'll want to create that and this is all part of essentials so i clicked on my lettering tool typed in my name from the pull down menu i will choose the font that i wish to use and make sure that the sizing and the spacing is how i would like it now this is a script font and i'm using the adjusters to move my letters exactly how i want them and if you notice i have overlapped a couple since this is sort of scripty i want the s and the a to be overlapping however that little dimple at the end caused by the letter s is underneath the a here and on marine vinyl that might cause an extra bump so on my stitch tab with lettering objects i want to make sure that my remove hidden stitches option is selected and therefore that little bump will be will not be there for when i'm stitching on marine vinyl once i've merged all my designs or created the lettering object as i want i'm ready to move on to the next step of creating the cloud shape so i have my design and i'm ready to start creating my cloud shape step one is getting into create mode and here we have a stitch artist level one i will be using draw with points and there are many videos available on the in brilliance youtube channel that teach you the fine tuned ways of using draw with points meaning that the fewer nodes that you use the smoother your shape can be and it's easier to edit it so once i have a general shape done you notice that's not crazy it's not perfect i'm finished drawing though i'm going to right click to end at this point because i've used draw with points and i have only created a few nodes here it's easy for me to edit the shape that i want to create and i can do so by either putting my mouse cursor on the line itself and double clicking to create a node or i can use the handles to adjust my shape and i will simply create my happy little cloud around the letters as i see fit i can be as detailed as huggy of the shape as i want to be or i can be a little loose and airy like this shape happens to be it's not too crazy and it gets it is how i want it to be for this particular design i do not close my shapes because um you don't have to close the shape i'm by leaving a gap here because when i go up here to the closed shape tool it automatically draws a line that connects the last two nodes and that just eliminates any possibility of having twisting nodes on top of each other because you notice when you have too many nodes you can get crazy shapes anyway there is how i've created a cloud by using draw with points in stitch artist level one for those that also have enthusiasts you can use the knock down function under the utility menu to create your cloud shape automatically when you go to utility and choose the knock down you'll notice that it adds knock down stitching however if you expand your object list and select that object itself go into create mode you'll notice that you have nodes around this object it is basically a filled shape that has stitches in it so if we go and select the line uh change it back to artwork so we take away the knock down stitching here we have a drawn shape and let me just change the color so that we can see it a little bit better there you can see our knockdown stitch is now a line object that we can use you'll notice that there are a lot of nodes around it and that's just because that's what was needed but some of those that is how it created it you can eliminate some of those by using your lasso the lat to use the lasso select the object so you see the nodes put your mouse cursor outside the nodes select them by drawing your lasso around them and hitting the delete key you'll notice that all the nodes were removed and you have the ability to reshape the line or let me select other ones here delete these when you select a node you can adjust the bezier handles to reshape it in the way that you want if you choose that you don't want this extra little dimple here you don't want that indent because it's going to be too many stitches into your vinyl you can simply select the nodes and remove them that is an easy way to reshape the knock down stitch drawn outline that was created by the enthusiast software for those of us that have stitch artist level three under the graphical operators there is the outlining function when you click on this button it will create a brand new design shown in your object list that has a shape for all of the stitches that existed on the page so if you notice we have multiple outlines because there are different groups of stitches on our design page while we have those that outline selected we can use the button right below it that says inflate these objects because our cloud shape we want it to be a little bit larger so when using our slider bar here we can choose to increase the size of that outline or the margin of that outline to be further away so it this can allow you to be more creative or more have a create a more customized shape so i have chosen to out um increase it by four millimeters which is the number that i have chosen and if any of your outlines have holes in them for example this small letter a i can choose to remove that so that it's not going to create the object with that particular hole in it so when i click ok i now look at my object list and i have these little bubbles around each one of the letter i'm still have them selected and the other option here or the other graphical operator tool is called union what that does if you remember your venn diagrams from grammar school it will take all of those selected objects and create one object that encompasses them all basically the union of all those shapes so let's click the button you'll notice that there is a new union shape here and it retains the ones that were originally available or the ones that reached the originals that were there just in case you wanted to use them for this particular project i don't so i will select all four of those and hit the delete key this is the resulting union of all of those objects you'll notice that it has created a separate shape inside of this if you like that shape for example you'd you think that that's pretty nifty you can keep it if you want to remove it simply right click on the object and you'll see that there is a hole and you can choose to delete the hole from that selected object which results in the cloud shape created in stitch artist level 3. the next step in our project is to create the tab that will extend from our cloud shape now the measurements for this are completely up to you depending on the application are you going to use a grommet a rivet a snap so measure one that you already have or determine what the measurements are that you need i'm going to put a grommet in the end of mine so i only need this to stick out maybe an inch at the very most now i'm a visual person so in order to make sure that this is three about three quarters of an inch wide and maybe a three quarters of an inch to an inch long i need a point of reference so i will go to my view menu and make sure that my grid is turned on this help each one of these squares is a is one centimeter away this so that'll be 20 centimeters if i'm looking between these two here one inch has 25 millimeters so if i use this as my guide that's about three quarters of an inch perfect so this is my center line and i'm looking at these vertical or the horizontal lines and figuring out exactly where that tab is going to come out so let me select all of my stitches and move them along that line so that i can see this is because this is going to be a very visual thing and i really want it to extend from this point come out about three quarters to an inch and come back into straight line so i have my plan i need to zoom in and again i am going to draw with points so i'm going to be in create mode draw with points and holding down the control and the option key or the alt key on windows at the same time this will allow me to draw straight nodes that are straight across so the alt key allows me to when i left click the alt key keeps it at the same distance so it's not wobbly refer to the draw with points um videos on the essentials or the on the stitch artist playlist and brilliance youtube channel to get more details on that so again i'm holding i did i released my mouse cursor to get two curved nodes here hold down the control and alt option key to get a straight node and finish it here so i have two straight nodes two curve nodes and i can edit later that's the beauty of this i'm going to leave them open because i don't want them closed i want them to connect to this shape and i'm going to right click just oops just right click to stop drawing and i will delete that note by selecting it and hit the delete key on my keyboard so i have my tab which is hard to see because my grid is on so let me turn my grid off by hitting the g key and now i can come through here and adjust these so that it creates the shape that i'm looking for that's the beauty of working with the bezier curves put as few nose as possible to create the shape that you want and don't be so picky because this is just little stitches that are going to be here looks perfect to me the key point is is that it has to start on this object of the cloud and exit on the average of the cloud you don't want it to connect it doesn't matter they are stitching one right after each other and now that we have our tab because i'm going to put my grommet or my now my grommet my little yeah my grommet is going to go right in here perfectly fine that's the size i want now i need to assign stitches so i'm going to select both of these objects at the same time one key thing to pay attention to is you see this outline object that i've drawn it is stitching after the letters so my digitizing plan my stitching plan is that i wanted to stitch the letters first on the vinyl and then it's going to stitch this cloud outline in a bean stitch so i have if my outline happened to be stitching first because i created it with knock down stitching make sure you right click on it and say move last so that it stitches final and that way yours will look just like mine i have them both selected i'm going to go up here to the top where it says run and it changes it to a run stitch now i don't know what those properties are so i need to go to the run stitch properties and the type of stitch it has set to is single i need to go and choose from this pull down menu the bean stitch so if i choose bean stitch this gives me the properties for this my stitch length is going to be set to whatever it is that i chose and i want it to be 2.3 millimeters that is my choice and i want to be a three pass again my choice and i've assigned the stitches to it now i prefer to the next step i do is i need to move my starts and my stops so i'm going to select this first run stitch and i can see that it's going to start stitching at this point and it's going to stop stitching at this point well i really want it to connect or at least stop stitching over here because what's going to happen is it will start at this point stitch around the edge and then it's going to jump over to this one i don't want that to happen i want to be one smooth operation so i want it basically to s it can start stitching over here but i want it to basically start and stop right at this one point that's that's what my plan is because my running stitch here was going to start stitching at that point so what how do i force that to happen well i'm going to have my line stitching i can see it stitching here and i'm actually going to change it back into artwork to get rid of the stitches so i'm not confused don't want to see it visually i'm going to put my mouse cursor right on this line double click and that puts a node right at this point at that while i have that node selected i'm going to choose to open and close my outline what that does is that moves the automatic start and stop to this point because it's a red dot so just trust me on this we're an artwork i move my open close point here click back on run stitch and it went to bean and look what happened it put my start and my stop right at that location so i don't have to move anything it just puts it there now for me i also like to have it start a little bit in or away from it so that i don't get a gobble of knots at this point i kind of want it to backtrack so this is just a technique that i use because at this point if you look at your outline here it's going to stitch my run stitch first and i really want to have a tying off stitch at this point so i'm going to go to my little bow tie here and just tell it to tie at the entry it's going to put a little locking stitch right here and then it's going to go to this stopping point and if you notice i'm not putting a tie at the exit because on my run stitch for this point it's going to immediately start stitching the run stitch for this tab and it's going to go down and stitch to the bottom of it let's move down here to the bottom it's going to stop here and i'm going to move that stop point in just a little bit so that it passed a back track and i'm going to say tie at the exit this is just something that i do to ensure that my ties do not um over do not come unraveled in my stitching we have our tab that is basically it's it's done in fact if we were to run our sew simulator right now we will see it's going to stitch out our name and then it's going to come through and automatically start stitching the cloud where we told it to and it stitches the tab right after it no jumps no nothing let's walk through the design to make sure that it is set up correctly in the software so that we head to machine everything happens exactly as we plan the plan is that we need the design to stitch on vinyl so that's my name i want the machine to stop and then i wanted to stitch the outline in order for the machine to stop each of these needs to be a different color we can use the same color at the machine but i need it to physically stop stitching so that i can stitch place my vinyl under my hoop right side down and stitch it together with a nice bean stitch so while i select the outline i will click on the color chip and choose a different color for the outline and there i have my two color breaks the other thing that i want to make sure that doesn't happen is i don't accidentally move something because this is nicely centered everything is lined up perfectly so right now if i were to click on the lettering it just clicks on the lettering all by itself oh i can actually make a mistake so i want to group these two items together so they're locked and just stays together so i'm going to select all go to the edit menu and choose to group them now no matter what i click on they are locked together and i don't have to worry about making an oops and having a problem the next thing that i want to ensure is what size of vinyl do i need to use for this project one of the ways that i do that is by using the basting box so under utility i will go to based design which puts a basting box to stitch first now it is the exact size of the design and i know i'm going to have to trim my vinyl so let me select that basting box hold down the shift key on my keyboard expand it resize it just a bit so that it's a little bit larger and now i have my design in my basting box and i am basically ready to go to my embroidery machine so first of all let me save my work so that's command s and i'm ready to put my usb in and save my stitch file go to the file menu go to save stitch file as select the usb from your list here save the usb save the file stitch it out to the usb take it out and go the machine and let's see how we stitch out this design to stitch the design that we have just finished you want to hoop tear away stabilizer and stitch color number one which is the basting box onto the stabilizer use this stitched box as a guide for cutting two pieces of marine vinyl i used a bit of double stick tape to hold the vinyl in place be sure to place the tape in the margin so that you don't accidentally stitch through it carefully return the hoop to the machine and stitch your name design when the finishing stitch is up next to stitch remove the hoop and place the second piece of vinyl right side down under the hoop carefully return the hoop to the machine without moving the arm or losing the backing vinyl bring the bobbin thread to the top of the hoop to ensure a clean stitched back side stitch a few stitches then trim both the top and bobbin threads using a variegated thread such as this coordinated color of mettler poly sheen adds a bit of pizzazz to the triple stitched bean stitch that is the finishing stitch of our key fob notice the clean back side along with the placement of the double stick tape which is out of the way during the stitching process use sharp scissors to carefully trim around the edges kai's 7150s cut the vinyl like a hot knife through warm butter finish your project with snaps grommets or rivets like those from gail's nest links to resources can be found in this video description if this video inspires you to purchase in brilliant software i would appreciate it if you used my affiliate link located in the video description thank you for watching

Channel: Lisa Shaw

Views: 13,088

Keywords: Machine Embroidery, mac embroidery software, machine embroidery software, embroidery designs, Embrilliance, Embrilliance Essentials, Essentials, Lisa SewBubbles, Bubbles Menagerie, Lisa Shaw, Afterhours with Lisa, StitchArtist, keyfob, snaptab, bubble, Enthusiast, Mettler polysheen, The Itch 2 Stitch, BXfont, BX font, BX, kai scissors

Id: Xe_fu3_2RkA

Length: 23min 28sec (1408 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020