QUILTsocial Issue 4 | Page 48

I started those sashes with the best of intentions, however, I had no idea that the fill pattern we chose for the letters was dense. Oh – let me rephrase that – that Madeline chose. Me, not being the smartest embroidery machine operator in the room, said, “No problem”. Quilt label stitched out with an embroidery machine Well I don’t remember how much in advance of the prom we started those sashes, but I swear my embroidery machine ran night and day for weeks to get them done. I timed my errands around the hoopings. I was counting down the minutes and those sashes got delivered to the prom (I know that was cutting it close) with not much time to spare before they were presented! This is an experience I’ll never forget! If memory serves me correctly, each letter took between one half hour and one hour to stitch out. There were 14 sashes in total (155 letters). Yes – do the math!!! Now if I would have had the Designer Ruby Royale, I would have realized right away by checking out the stitching time that I was in for a long haul. Live and learn! The sashes were beautiful and definitely the talk of the evening – so I would like to think! More words on quilts While these next samples were not stitched on the Designer Ruby Royale, I thought you would enjoy seeing various ways that embroidered words can be incorporated into our projects. These projects, like the sashes, were stitched on an older Husqvarna Viking embroidery machine. Personalized swim team towel I’m in the process of making a quilt for myself. The theme is “all about me – in words”. One of the words that will be incorporated into the quilt is my personal blog address. I found a neat font and stitched it out. It will likely become a border in the quilt. Blog address stitched out in embroidery Detail of the embroidered lettering A number of years ago, a friend of mine got married. Another friend of mine and I decided to make a quilt, but instead of making a large quilt, we decided that two lap sized quilts would be better. They were identical so to distinguish which was which – I embroidered HIS and HERS on the quilt tops. The writing is very subtle, but it’s there! Machine embroidered quilt labels Embroidered words on swim towels While the above uses of embroidered words were mostly for fun, there’s also the functional side of embroidered words. My daughter was on a swim team and the entire team had the same orange towel. I choose a funky font and embroidered her name. No more lost towel! Machine embroidered words in quilt sashings Another use of words on a quilt is to identify the name of the block. In this example below, I used the built-in alphabet to stitch the block name on the sashing. If the sashing was larger, I could have used the embroidery fonts. The yellow and blue words stitched out 48 QUILTsocial .com ● issue 4 A customer of mine wants a memory quilt. The hands of the family members are appliqued to the block background. Each person’s name is machine embroidered in the sashing. I used the Clarendon 20 mm font from the built-in fonts on the Designer Ruby Royale.