Mini Tutorial – Monogramming Without an Embroidery Machine

I was a pastor’s kid and a missionary kid.  Us kids would often get gifts and presents from people we had never met and that always made me feel special.  I still remember a necklace with a dove flying down on it (for peace) that I loved and wore for many years when I was a girl.  To this day I don’t know who sent it to us in Taiwan all the way from the States.  I always thought that when I got older I would do the same for my pastor’s kids.  About 5 years ago, I started giving them gifts at Christmas time.  These two drawing cases are for 2 of my pastor’s daughters.

When it came time to monogram them with coordinating fabric like I’ve done in the past, I couldn’t find anything that would go with this blue toile.  So I “embroidered” them, without at embroidery machine.  You all may have figured this out WAY long ago, but it’s taken me until now to figure this out.  So here’s a mini-tutorial on how I did it.

You will need:

• Fabric fused with fusible interfacing (I fuse all mine for the drawing cases)
• A piece of heavier-weight interfacing
• A letter stencil (I used the pop-out of the chipwood letters available at Michael’s)
• A pen that matches the thread you will use

Make an outline of the letter.

    

Place the heavy-weight interfacing under the letter.  This keeps the fabric from scrunching under the pull of the stitches.  Using a zig zag stitch, sew over the lines to form the letter shape, stopping at corners and adjusting the fabric as necessary.  My zigzag stitch width was 3.3mm with a length of .4 mm.

I used a presser foot with an open toe so that I could see the lines more clearly.  Ta-da!  It takes more time and energy than an embroidery machine, but it sure is a lot cheaper.