Tow Your Own Banner

Our newest Stipple Collection, Life’s a Beach, can easily portray a message that’s dear to your heart, not mine.  Instead of the Life’s a Beach message, use Inspirations’ Perfect Embroidery Pro or Word Art in Stitches to write Happy Birthday, It’s a Lake Life, Summer Fun or any short phrase.  Here’s how.

Open TopRow_Hoop3_BannerLeft and Merge TopRowHoop4_BannerRight (C2S format) into the hoop.  Align the designs as they were intended. Save the design as TopDouble.

Ungroup if they are grouped.  Select and delete Life’s a Beach. Select the Text tool and type Happy in the text field of the Property Box. Select the Hobo font.  Size Happy to fit the vertical space of the banner.

With the Text tool selected, right click, and select Path, right click again and select Edit Baseline.  Use the handles of the nodes to curve the baseline aligning the bottom of the text with the banner.

Type Birthday into the text field in the Properties Box, click Apply.

Repeat the steps above to set Birthday into the banner.  Change the color of Birthday to separate it from Happy.

Change the color sequence order so that it stitches properly. The first color should be the stipple of the left design, the tow line, the placement guide of the banner applique fabric, the tackdown of the applique fabric and the Happy text. Select all five colors, copy and paste into a new file. Save as TopRowHappy.

Go back to the TopDouble file and save it as TopRowBirthday.  Send both designs to your machine in the appropriate format and you’ve got a customized mini-quilt!  Isn’t software fun?