Applique letters and monograms: fonts that work, sizes that stitch, frames

Letters are the most popular applique subject and the least forgiving. A heart has one tip; the letter M has four, plus two narrow inner corners, plus strokes that must stay wide enough for a satin band on each side with fabric visible between them. Font choice and size decide most of the result before a stitch is sewn.

How the studio builds letters

You type text, pick a font and a cap height, and the studio renders the glyph outlines (from the font's TTF or OTF file, via opentype.js) to a vector, then runs them through the same tracing pipeline as uploaded artwork. That matters for one reason: overlapping letters merge. A script word whose letters touch becomes one closed outline, one piece of fabric, one satin border, exactly as the browser draws it. Separate block letters stay separate pieces, each with its own placement, tack-down and satin, in stitching order left to right.

Every piece then goes through the normal analysis: minimum feature width against satin width, tip sharpness, hole size, and the pass-rate simulation. Letters under 25 mm cap height trigger a warning; monogram frames under 60 mm do too.

The 17 bundled fonts, ranked for applique

All are open-licensed and bundled with the studio. The grouping below follows the style tag the engine assigns, and the "safe from" column is the cap height at which the narrowest stroke of a typical capital clears 5 mm, the minimum feature width for a 4 mm satin. Those thresholds are our measurements of the glyphs, rounded to 5 mm; check the live preview for your actual letters.

| Font | Style | License | Safe from (cap height) | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Fredoka | Rounded | OFL | 25 mm | The safest choice: wide, even strokes, round terminals, open counters. Variable weight; the studio uses the heaviest. | | Baloo 2 | Rounded | OFL | 25 mm | Similar to Fredoka with slightly more contrast. | | Sniglet | Rounded | OFL | 25 mm | Very heavy, rounded corners. Counters in a, e are small; watch them under 30 mm. | | Concert One | Rounded | OFL | 25 mm | Heavy, slightly condensed. Good for long words in a narrow hoop. | | Bubblegum Sans | Rounded | OFL | 30 mm | Playful, tapering strokes; the thin ends need the extra size. | | Lilita One | Display | OFL | 25 mm | Heavy block with soft corners. Excellent for single initials. | | Titan One | Display | OFL | 25 mm | Very heavy; counters close early, so keep it at 30 mm and up for B, R, a, e. | | Bowlby One | Display | OFL | 30 mm | Ultra-heavy; the counters of B and 8 are tiny. Fine for initials, poor for words. | | Luckiest Guy | Display | Apache 2.0 | 30 mm | Irregular comic outline; the wobble is charming at 40 mm and noise at 25. | | Carter One | Display | OFL | 30 mm | Contrast between thick and thin strokes; thins need the size. | | Alfa Slab One | Slab | OFL | 30 mm | Heavy slab; the slab serifs are 5 mm wide only from about 30 mm. | | Passion One | Block | OFL | 25 mm | Condensed heavy sans. Straight sides, sharp corners; expect corner fanning. | | Righteous | Block | OFL | 30 mm | Geometric with moderate stroke width and pointed apexes (A, M, N). Blunt them or go larger. | | Rubik Mono One | Block | OFL | 25 mm | Monospaced, very heavy, square counters. The most "sports jersey" of the set. | | Pacifico | Script | OFL | 40 mm | Brush script; letters connect into one piece. Thin connectors need the size. | | Lobster | Script | OFL | 35 mm | Bold script; connects; the heaviest script in the set. | | Great Vibes | Script | OFL | 60 mm | Formal calligraphic script with hairlines. The engine notes it needs 60 mm and larger letters, and even then hairline flourishes become plain satin rather than fabric. |

The pattern: rounded and heavy display fonts are safest because every stroke is wide and every corner is already blunt, which is what the artwork guide asks you to do by hand for other artwork. Block fonts with sharp apexes and scripts with hairlines need size to compensate.

Script fonts: one word, one piece

When script letters overlap, the trace merges them, so "Emma" in Pacifico is a single outline. This is good for stitching (one placement, one tack-down, one satin) and good for cutting (one piece). The catch is the connectors: the stroke between two letters is the narrowest part of the word, and it must clear the feature-width rule. In Pacifico at 40 mm cap height the connectors are around 5 to 6 mm; at 25 mm they are 3 to 4 mm and the satin bands overlap there, turning the connector into a lump of satin with no fabric under it. The tool flags it as a narrow feature.

If the word is long, the problem is often not the connectors but the hoop: "Charlotte" in Lobster at 40 mm cap height is about 230 mm wide, which does not fit a 5x7 hoop's 130 by 180 mm field even rotated. Use the hoop sizes guide before choosing the size.

Minimum size: 25 mm cap height

Cap height is the height of a capital letter from baseline to top, not the font size in points. The studio measures in cap height because that is what decides stroke width. The floor of 25 mm comes from the numbers: a heavy font has a stroke about a quarter to a third of the cap height, so 25 mm gives 6 to 8 mm strokes, and a 4 mm satin leaves 2 to 4 mm of visible fabric between its bands. Below that the letter becomes satin-only, and you should digitize it as a plain satin letter, not applique.

Two consequences:

• Lowercase needs more. The x-height of most fonts is 60 to 75 percent of cap height. A 25 mm cap height gives 15 to 19 mm lowercase, and the counters in a, e, o, s go under 8 mm. Use capitals, or raise the cap height to 35 mm for mixed case.
• Holes. B, D, O, P, Q, R, A and the numerals 0, 4, 6, 8, 9 have counters. The studio keeps them as holes with satin borders when they are at least 8 mm across, and warns otherwise. For a small letter, fill the counter (the studio's "fill holes" option) and accept a solid B. Brother's PE-Design makes the same trade-off explicit with its "hole sewing" switch for A, B, O.

The classic three-letter monogram

The traditional layout puts the surname initial larger in the middle, the first-name initial on the left and the middle-name initial on the right; Mary Ann Jones becomes M J A with the J set larger (Wikipedia: Monogram). When all three letters are the same height the order is first, middle, last. The studio's monogram mode uses the first layout by default: type the initials in name order and it reorders and scales them.

Sizes that stitch well as applique, from the same rules as above:

| Layout | Side letters | Centre letter | Overall width | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Small (5x7 hoop) | 30 mm cap | 45 mm cap | about 110 mm | | Standard (6x10 or 8x8) | 40 mm cap | 60 mm cap | about 150 mm | | Large (8x12 and up) | 50 mm cap | 75 mm cap | about 190 mm |

The gap between letters should be at least the satin width plus 2 mm, so the three satin borders do not touch; the studio spaces them at 6 mm by default and merges the pieces into one if you close the gap on purpose.

Couples' monograms (first initial, shared surname initial larger, second first initial) follow the same geometry. A single initial is just a large letter: 60 to 100 mm cap height in a heavy font is the easiest applique there is.

Frames

A frame is a shape stitched under or around the letters. The studio offers circle, split circle, diamond, square, heart, scallop and shield, at any size from 60 mm up. Under 60 mm the letters inside fall below their own minimum and the tool warns.

| Frame | What to watch | | --- | --- | | Circle | The simplest; no tips, one smooth satin. Letters sit inside with 6 mm clearance to the ring. | | Split circle | A circle divided by a horizontal band that carries a name; the band must be at least 12 mm tall at a 4 mm satin. | | Diamond | Four tips; the studio blunts them to a 2 mm radius. Letters are cramped horizontally; use the vertical for the centre initial. | | Square | Four right-angle corners, fanned. The easiest frame for a cutter. | | Heart | One tip at the bottom and a notch at the top; the notch is a concave corner where the outer satin rails converge. | | Scallop | Many small convex bumps; each bump needs a radius of at least 5 mm, so a scallop frame is a 100 mm-and-up frame. | | Shield | Two upper corners and a bottom tip; a good shape for three letters because the centre is tallest. |

Knockout or stacked

There are two ways to combine frame and letters, and they produce different files:

Stacked. The frame is one piece of fabric, stitched first with its own three layers. The letters are separate pieces stitched on top of the frame fabric, each with placement, tack-down and satin. Two fabrics, two or more colour groups, and the frame's satin runs under the letters. This is the standard approach, tolerant of placement error because each piece is judged on its own edge.

Knockout. The letters are cut out of the frame as holes. One piece of fabric with letter-shaped holes; the base fabric shows through as the letters; the satin borders the outside of the frame and the inside of every hole. One fabric, one placement, and a striking result on a contrasting base. The catch is that every counter becomes an island of frame fabric (the middle of an O or A is a separate floating piece), and the cut file has small internal cuts that a rotary cutter handles better than scissors. Use knockout with heavy fonts at 40 mm cap height and up, where the letter holes are wide and the counters are big enough to place.

The studio labels which one you have chosen in the layer list, and the pass rate is computed on every edge, holes included.

Licensing

All 17 bundled fonts are under the SIL Open Font License, except Luckiest Guy, which is Apache 2.0. Both allow commercial use: the OFL FAQ says the authors "allow you to use their font software as such for any kind of design work", listing logos, signage and t-shirts, and the only restriction is that the font files themselves cannot be sold on their own (OFL FAQ). Selling appliqued shirts, or selling the embroidery files you generate, is design work. Apache 2.0 is at least as permissive for this use.

If you load your own TTF or OTF, its licence is your responsibility. Many commercial fonts allow embroidery under a desktop licence and some do not; check the EULA for "embroidery" or "physical products".

About BX fonts

BX is Embrilliance's installer format for alphabets: a digitizer sells a pre-stitched alphabet as a .BX file, and Embrilliance installs it as a keyboard-typeable font (Embrilliance FAQ). They are stitch files, digitized letter by letter, usually as satin or fill, sometimes as applique. They do not contain vector outlines.

The studio does not use them and does not need them. It builds applique from font outlines, so any font that renders in a browser is an applique alphabet at any size, with the border and the cut file generated for the exact letters you typed. If you already own BX applique alphabets and like them, keep using them in Embrilliance; the cut file tool in convert an existing applique to a cut file can read their placement lines.

Quick decisions

• First project: one capital initial, Fredoka or Lilita One, 60 mm, no frame.
• A name: Fredoka or Concert One capitals at 30 mm, check the hoop width.
• A script name: Lobster at 35 mm or Pacifico at 40 mm; expect one piece.
• A three-letter monogram: 40 mm sides, 60 mm centre, circle or shield frame, stacked.
• Anything under 25 mm: not applique. Use plain satin lettering.

What goes wrong at the machine is covered in the troubleshooting guide, and how far outside the letter outline to cut, in the cut allowance guide.