Have you ever had an embroidery design package that was not really ‘your thing’ but contained some designs that you really liked? For me, the new Anita Goodesign Party Flags release is one of those packages – I really like the letter-in-circle embroidery designs, but I don’t have a use for party flags. So I made some minor changes to the embroidery design to suit my use. Believe it or not, an embroidery design is not cast in concrete – it is stitches in fabric – and there are ways to make changes to how a design is sewn – ways that range from very simple to requiring computer software.

I brought the stitch file for the letter I wanted to use into my embroidery software and deleted the stitching lines for the flag. If you do not have software that will allow you to do this, you can just skip those stitching lines when your machine is about to sew them. To use any of the flag designs in this package as used in this project, the first two steps and the last one are not sewn.

Items other than flags that might be worthy of letter-in-circle designs are hand towels, tote bags, blankets – in summary about any piece of fabric on which you would like to have one or more circled letter(s) or number(s) or a combination of both.

Materials:

–One 4” piece of appliquè fabric for circle. To give it more body, use a heavy weight spray starch and press.

–Two pieces of medium weight tear-away stabilizer
–Towel you want to put your design on
–Temporary spray adhesive, such as kk2000

Instructions:

1. Hoop medium weight tear-away stabilizer.

2.  Stitch out the placement line on stabilizer.

3. Place appliquè fabric over placement line and stitch out the next color that is the tack down line.
4. Skip the next color, it is the satin stitch around the circle, we will do it last.
5. Stitch out the letter.

6. Remove from hoop and tear away the stabilizer.

7. Stabilizer removed.

8. Trim close to the placement line, being careful not to cut the outer circle of thread. (I don’t know why, but in this picture the black and purple looks brown and pink. This project was not tortured. No fabric or thread was harmed during the production of this object.)

9. Position the appliquè on the towel where you want it. Recommended placement is centered and 2 to 3 inches up from the bottom.

10. Using a fabric marker, place a mark at top, bottom, and each side of applique. These marks will be your guides to find the center of the circle.

11. Using a ruler and a fabric marker, mark the center of the circle. If you have an embroidery machine that uses a ‘snowman’ for perfect placement, you can place a snowman to control both the position and orientation (lean to left or right) automatically. Of course, a circle does not have any lean to left or right, it is the exception to needing to orient a design.
12. Hoop another piece of medium weight stabilizer and spray lightly with temporary spray adhesive, such as kk2000.  I usually do not hoop a terry cloth towel because the fabric is so thick and stretchy. Sticking it down to the stabilizer generally causes less distortion of the towel fabric and a better final result of the embroidery or appliquè. Also, not all hoops can handle the thickness of terry cloth.

13. Lay towel on top of hooped stabilizer positioning the center under the needle.
14. Stitch the placement line again.

15. Spray the backside of the appliquè fabric with temporary spray adhesive and place on towel over placement line.

16. Skip the next color, which should be the straight tack down stitch, and stitch out the satin stitch.

17. Remove from hoop and tear away stabilizer. Be sure to remove the inner circle of stabilizer before using or gifting your project.