Resizing and Printing the Outline Stitch Image for Embroidery
by James Cummings
The main advantage to our ebooks is the ability to resize and print the image to your specifications, so that you may trace the design onto the fabric to create the quilt block size of your choice.
If you want to make one of the smaller designs larger, you may find that the outline is thicker and somewhat jagged (the line becomes "pixelated.") In this case you can trace it onto another piece of paper by using a lightbox, or merely trace the motif onto the fabric using a light box such as the Light Tracer from Artograph, making the line thinner and smoother as you go. If using pencil, use an artist's hard lead pencil. Soft lead pencils have an oil in the lead that can stain fabric, and is difficult to remove. As an alternative to using pencil, try a .01 fine point Sakura Micron Pigma pen in a light red (dark pink.) Your stitches will completely cover the marks.
Conversely, if you make one of the large designs very small, for a miniature piece or to stitch on a crazy quilt block, you may find that some of the fine detail is difficult to see and recreate with stitches. In this case, you may wish to take some artistic license and omit some of the detail or represent it with one or two small stitches.
While it is possible to use a drawing program to smooth out pixellated lines, the result will be a mechanical look, and the original charm of the drawing will be lost. In addition, the original quilter may have simplified the drawing or copied it from a newspaper or catalog and omitted some of the lines. The old printing processes may have introduced splotches of ink. It is up to you, the needle artist to change the drawing to suit your own purposes.
First, you will need an image editor. The one I use is Adobe Photoshop Elements. Although it is a smaller version of the full fledged Adobe Photoshop, it has all the features that an amateur photographer or even some professionals could ever use. The following directions are for use with this particular photo editing software program.
Instructions for resizing:
1. Right click on the image and select copy.
2. Open Adobe Photoshop Elements.
3. From the edit menu, select new, image from clipboard. You should now have a copy of the image on the Adobe Photoshop Elements workspace.
4. From the image menu, select resize.
5. Type in the desired size in the document area.
6. In the dpi box, type in 240, which is a good resolution for this work. You may leave the rest of the boxes alone and select ok.
Your resized image will now appear on the Adobe Photoshop Elements work space. Use the little magnifying glass icons on the toolbar to adjust the image for good viewing. This will not affect the print size. Select print from the file menu and print your image.
If you have shrunk an image to a great degree, you may wish to sharpen the image. From the filter menu choose "Sharpen" for a quick fix or choose "Unsharp Mask," to play around with the settings until you get a result that pleases you. Don't forget to save your work for future printing.
For support in resizing images contact Jim by email.
