Well, here I am, once again trying to think of something about which to write. It’s been more than five years since I’ve touched a sewing machine for anything other than to put up a hem or repair a seam. I was never an expert on anything sewing or embroidery related and now the bit of knowledge and experience I have is woefully out of date. I can no longer remember even things I had pretty well figured out. Frankly, I seem to have become an old woman who keeps cats. Fortunately for you, and for me when I get back to my machine (and I will), there is a wealth of information available online, in books, in these blogs and in the community section of the AnnTheGran site.

If you attended any of my classes in the past you might remember that I would often ask everyone to raise their hands and then to lower them as I would ask, “Who used to paint tee shirts? Who used to make jewelry? Who has a box full of tole paints? A drawer full of embroidery floss. A Scroll saw?” And on and on through a litany of hand crafts. Eventually all the hands were down. We’re a group of women who like to create things with our hands. Lots of different things in lots of different media. And we go from one craft to the next, never returning to some and always returning to others. In the five years since I have stitched I have gotten into new things, beading, cooking, and returned to photography and digital scrapbooking.

A response to my last blog posting asked about monogramming:

New to this game of embroidery!  What is the correct way of a monogram? (First inital, last inital, middle initial?) Also what is a "keyboard font"?

If all the letters are the same size, as on a pocket or cuff, then it would be first, middle, last initials. If the letters are large, as on linens or purses, with the center letter larger than the right and left letters then it would be first, last, middle. If it’s for a couple, it would be his, theirs, hers. For a same sex couple it would be his/hers, theirs, his/hers. I don’t know how they would choose which first name initial would go first and which last. Perhaps just which way it looks nicer, alphabetical order or a game of rock, paper scissors. I’ve had only one case in which the bride did not change her last name. Since the two last name initials were H and B I took the right upright off the H and backed the B into its place creating a “new” letter-ish. That was fortunate. Had the letters not fit so well together I probably would have put a small decoration between the two letters with the first name initial on the same side as the last name initial.

A keyboard font is one which you can simply type in with your embroidery software, as opposed to separate designs of embroidery letters that you combine to make words or monograms.

Hope that helps!

Ann