Adventures with Stitch Artist: A Stylized Cat from a Dingbat

I love dingbats! I use them repeatedly in my scrapbooking and my paper crafting. So, why should I not try to use them in StitchArtist (SA)? Plus, it is just plain fun to go "shopping"!

Speaking of "shopping"....There are many sites that offer free fonts. Two that I have frequented for year and find reliable are Dingbatdepot and Dafont. Lettering Delights has their own line of dingbats called "Doodlebats" for a reasonable price.

With no real plan, except to show how to use dingbats with the True Type font function of SA, I went shopping.....

I found "Founa!" I could see stylized embroidery! SOLD! 

Before I proceed, I am using StitchArtist 3; you will see a lot of buttons! True Type Fonts are also available beginning with StitchArtist 1. 

Downloaded and installed on my Mac, I was ready to go.....or so I thought. I opened my Embrilliance software. I selected CREATE DESIGN from the toolbar. From the TOOLPANE, I selected the TT FONT. (If the names are confusing you can find them in the Embrilliance manual p. 10.)

 

The FONT WINDOW opened and I clicked on the down arrow under "family" to look for my font. 

Uh oh! The font was not listed. What did I do? 

I had never noticed the "wheel" at the top of the FONT box (1). I selected it and a menu opened! 

I thought MANAGE FONTS would allow me to select what font appeared in SA. Instead, it took me to the listing of fonts installed on my computer. "Founa" was right where it should be! 

Drat! I really want to use it....Maybe, just maybe, there is something wrong with the font itself....Off to Pages (comparable to Word) to see!

 

Odd, not listed there either! Now I was on a mission....to be able to use this dingbat font in my SA. It WILL work; I am stubborn. And, I have several softwares that may help me out! First my Silhouette Studio....not there. On to Inkscape...

There it was! I really need to learn more about Inkscape. But I think I can at least get a graphic for my embroidery project.

 

Before I go on, a couple of things about dingbats...when the plan works, that is! Dingbats open a whole new world of creativity. Each character in the "alphabet" is associated with a keystroke---they are typed. This is easy and quick, but can be interesting when choosing one character. Most downloadable files include a "character map" allowing you to see which key is associated with which character. I keep this in a NOTE in my Notes App.

I see that the cat is the letter "d". I'll start there!

Have I said that I really need to learn more about Inkscape? But that's another story. After much trial and error---seriously several hours worth--I had an SVG file to open in SA!

And here's where the SA adventure begins!

In the video (and on my stitchout) I kept the cat in one color. Changing colors gives this guy a bit of a different look!

In the end, when I stitched C is for .... I sized the cat down. I lost some of the fine detail of the satin, but it still stitched flawlessly! While you are here....take a close look at the shading stitch. If it is too open for you, decrease the density a little; this takes some practice, but you will soon know what you like!

In summary, the features of StitchArtist that I used:

DRAW WITH POINTS

SATIN BORDER

CLOSE AREA

FILL

Thank you for joining me on this "dingy" adventure! I cannot wait until next time!