Adjusting machine embroidery fonts to the hoop – Dreamweaver XE

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I talked about 4 easy steps for using Sulky Sticky + self-adhesive stabilizer for embroidering small pieces of ribbon, fabric, caps, etc. that do not fill a hoop.

The hoop is locked into the carriage of the Dreamweaver XE from Brother and today I’ll show you how to set up the desired lettering to embroider on the ribbons. The ultimate purpose of the embroidered ribbons is they will be quilt labels.

On the home screen, select the Embroidery Edit key.

Now select the Character patterns (font) key on the embroidery edit screen.

I now select the desired font.

I type out the words using the same steps outlined in my QUILTsocial post on December 19th, 7 simple steps to add words to your machine embroidery designs.

Here’s the lettering I’m using for my ribbons.

Once I’m happy with the lettering, I press EMBROIDERY on the LCD screen of the Dreamweaver XE.

If the selected embroidery design is too big to fit in the hoop, this warning will pop up on the LCD screen. Since I’ve already set up the ribbons in the smaller hoop, I’ll need to adjust the size of the design.

One easy way to do this is to press CLOSE to exit the warning screen and then press the SPACING key.

Make sure that the desired line of words is highlighted and then press the decrease spacing button (the one with the arrows pointing in) to make the letters closer together. The other button will spread the letters out.

The modified design on the Dreamweaver XE screen shows how the letters in the top row are now closer together, making this line the same length as the line below it.

Now press the EMBROIDERY key to see if the smaller design will work with the selected embroidery frame.

Since the warning screen didn’t pop up, I’m good to go! Tomorrow I’ll get stitching with the Dreamweaver XE.