Belks
A DesignaKnit Lesson
One year at Christmas, I bought my daughter the cutest outfit. It was a sweatshirt and sweatpants, made out of regular sweatshirt fabric except the front of the shirt was knitted. All the bands were sweater-knit ribs. The sweatshirt fabric matched the sweater fabric exactly; no doubt the 2 were dyed to match. Not only was it a pretty garter carriage sweater pattern but best of all, it had a machine embroidered flower in the middle of the design. Since I had my new Brother Pacesetter 8200 embroidery machine, it was exactly what I wanted to do, use my new toy in conjunction with my other toys. So, I scanned the embroidery (for later whenever I have time to learn how to digitize scanned images) and my friend and I copied the garter carriage part of the sweater.
The design is great. It is a medallion-like design on the front yoke that is begging to be embellished. This design is not a circle but rather an elongated oval. Be sure to do a tension swatch before you knit it, if you don't you may end up with a circle rather than an oval shape. You sure don't have to have a fancy embroidery machine for this, in fact my friend doesn't and she plans on knitting her monogram on her sweater inside the medallion with her garter carriage..
Try this:
Download the .pat design above and go into Stitch Designer and load the Color pattern.
Turn on the Selection Box and box around the medallion part of the design.
Select the large magnifying glass.
Your medallion will now be large enough to work with. Use the Selection Box again and select the middle of the medallion then click on the ABC Icon and type in any 3 initials in all caps or the first and last in all caps and the middle initial in lower case.
Select your desired font.
Under Text Height, select Fit To Box.
Under Text Width, select Fit inside box.
Click OK and after a few minutes your medallion should have a monogram inside it.
WAIT! Don't click your mouse button yet. If you grab the middle square inside the monogram, you can position the initials exactly where you want them to be. If you grab any of the outer edge boxes, you can drag the letters wider and taller or shorter and narrower.
When you have them the way you like them, click the mouse button again and your monogram is permanently positioned. Save it!
Now go into Standard Shaping or Original Shaping and make yourself a round neck pullover.
When the pullover is exactly what you want, save it and go back into Stitch Designer. Your monogrammed front should be waiting for you. If you aren't happy with your monogram, click Undo and redo the letters.
Select Shapes and Front. When your front shape is over the monogrammed front, you can move the shape around until you have everything exactly where you want it. (select the middle garment just below the large magnifying glass to move the garment). Remember, don't put the monogram too high, if you are a cut and sew person, don't forget to leave 4 inches for your round neck. Don't make it too low either, you don't want a monogram over your tummy. The purchased one I had, started 5" below the front shoulders or 1" below the round neck.
If you want to knit the back and sleeves using the little seed stitch pattern, simply box a portion of the bottom of the pattern. Pay attention to how big your box is, the numbers to the right will indicate this for you. Click on the camera to copy, select File, New, Manually Select Size and type in the box size. Now click the Paste Icon or select Edit Paste. To set the stitches, click the mouse button once.
Be sure to save the pattern and have fun with it, embroider on it, duplicate stitch in it, knit it! Hey, if you like to sew, sew one using lightweight fleece and knit the front and ribs!!!
©Rosalind Porter, Piney Mountain Cottage
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