Did-It-Myself SVG Monogram Tutorial Part One: Picasa

I love monograms, maybe because I just love my name; I love that it's unique, and I love the history behind it! My parents named both my sister and me after relatives -- My grandmother's name is Sarah and my mom's name is Jean. They thought there were too many just plain Sarah's (and there are quite a few) so they decided to call me by both my first and middle name, Sarah Jean.  A lot of my close friends and family just call me SJ for short, and I jump at any chance I get to put my initials/monogram on something. So here's how I made my own monogram in SVG format...

Wait, what is SVG? SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. According toWikipedia, "SVG is an XML-based vector image format for two-dimensional graphics that has support for interactivity and animation." There's a bunch more technical jargon that goes into it, but basically the biggest difference between SVG and a typical graphic file, such as a .JPEG or .GIF, is that a vector graphic can be scaled (i.e. enlarged) while preserving its shape--there are no pixels! This means with a single SVG file you can make a HUGE canvas or a tiny business card. You can create SVG files with programs like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape.

Now on to the monogram making... The first step in making my own SVG monogram was to find a monogram alphabet. I love the geometric, clean lines of a circle monogram, and I ended up choosing this alphabet to use as a template. I recommend choosing a file that is fairly large to avoid the letters being too pixelated; the file I used wasn't an SVG file, so if I had to enlarge any of the letters I was going to lose some of the definition. For reference, the file I chose was 1062x1408 pixels. Next I needed to do some cropping and chopping. I opened my file in Picasa to edit my image. Here's how I made my edits: 

After I had three separate files for each of the three letters in my monogram, I was ready to use Inkscape to create my SVG Monogram.

You can read part two of my tutorial here: Part Two: Tracing in Inkscape

And here's Part Three: Editing Nodes and Paths in Inkscape

**UPDATE 4.11.14 You can now purchase the complete circle monogram alphabet SVG file in my Etsy shop!

Monogram Madness!

This past week I have been diligently working on an entire circle monogram alphabet using Inkscape and I have finally finished all 26 sets of letters!

Now I can make a monogram with any letter combination imaginable and I can completely customize the size and color depending on the project.

I've put together a tutorial to show ya'll how I used Picasa and Inkscape to create this monogram alphabet.

• In Part One I used Picasa to edit and crop an image to use as a template.
• Part Two shows you how I used the trace bitmap function in Inkscape to convert the template into SVG format.
• And Part Three explains how I edited nodes and paths in Inkscape to get nice clean, crisp letters.

**UPDATE 4.11.14 You can now purchase the SVG file that contains all 26 sets of letters in left, middle, and right positions in my Etsy shop!

Did-It-Myself Made-from-Scratch, Custom Corn Hole Bags

When I decided to make a set of custom corn hole boards for a close friend of mine, I knew a set of store-bought cornhole bags just wouldn't do. A quick trip to the American Cornhole Association's website provided me these specifications for tournament sanctioned bags:

The corn bags shall be made from two fabric squares with a quarterinch double stitched seam on all four sides. The corn bags should be made from 12 oz / sq yd duck canvas and may be any color that is easy to see during Cornhole play. Each bag shall be filled with approximately 2 cups of corn feed and finished bags should be a minimum of 6" X 6" square and weigh between 14 and 16 ounces.

This gave me the perfect starting point for designing and making my very own bags; however, I did fudge a couple of things in order to make my life a little easier:

• I used the 10 oz duck canvas that they carry at Joann's. This saved me from having to order 12 oz canvas from somewhere online, which would mean not being able to see the color in person, paying for shipping, and waiting for it to arrive. The bags I made almost a year ago from the 10 oz canvas have held up extremely well, even with constant use.
• I cut my fabric squares 7 inches square, which gave me a 1/2 seam allowance. This gave me some room to breathe when doing the double stitching, and by trimming the seam allowance before turning I think it probably ended up being pretty close to 1/4 inch in the end.

Anywaysss, let's get on to the fun part!

I started with 1/4 of a yard each of orange and black duck cloth. For a set of four bags, I cut 8 squares that measured 7 inches by 7 inches from each color, so I had 8 orange squares and 8 black squares. For the design on the bags, I used the same mixture of textile medium and acrylic paint that I used on my American Flag Shorts. I painted four of the orange squares to look like basketballs and four of the black squares with a UNC Asheville "A." After the paint was dry, I heat set the design with an iron, following the directions on the textile medium bottle.

Then it was time to break out the sewing machine! I took two squares, one painted with a design and one plain, and pinned them right sides together. Using a 1/2 inch seam allowance, I sewed along the dotted blue line in the diagram below, making sure to back stitch at the beginning and end of the stitching for added strength--after all, these bags are going to be tossed around quite a bit! For reinforcement, I sewed into the seam allowance about 1/8 inch from my first stitching line, as indicated by the green dotted line in the diagram.

Here's what one of my squares looked like once I was done sewing--

After all of my squares were sewn together, I trimmed the corners and the seam allowance. I left the bottom seam allowance at 1/2 inch to make it easier to sew the opening closed after filling the bags.

Then I turned each bag right side out and finger-pressed the seam allowance to the inside of the bag.

For filler I used whole corn feed that I picked up at my local Southern States. You can buy a 50 pound bag (which would make approximately 50 bags) or you can buy it by the pound (which is what I did) and not have 42 extra pounds of whole corn feed laying around. Since ACA regulation corn hole bags weigh between 14-16 ounces a piece, I purchased 8 pounds of feed and even ended up having a little extra left over. Using a kitchen scale to measure, I filled each bag until it weighed approximately one pound.

After the bag was filled, I pinned the opening closed. Then I pushed all of the corn to the side of the bag opposite the opening and added some pins to keep the corn out of the way of my sewing machine. Here's what the bag looked like after I was done pinning--

NOTE: I did not paint a design on the bags I used to take these pictures, but if I had, the design should be on the side showing in the picture above.

Next I sewed straight across the entire length of the side with the opening, getting as close to edge of the bag as possible to make sure I caught the seam allowance. I also back stitched at the beginning and end of the seam for added strength.

HINT: Whenever I top stitch anything, I always use a hand sewing needle to bring the top thread to the back or wrong side of whatever I'm sewing and tie a knot with the bobbin thread. This gives the bag a more finished look, plus I like to think it helps keep the seam from unraveling over time (<- not sure how true that is, but I haven't had any issues like that so far, knock on wood!)

I sewed another line directly on top of my first one, complete with back stitching and knotting the two threads on the back side of the bag, and voila! I had my very own made-from-scratch, custom cornhole bag.

And after all eight bags were sewn up, I was finished with my complete, custom corn hole set!

Want to know how I made my custom corn hole boards? Check out this post!