Spring is in the air and that means weddings, new homes, and real estate agent gifts, or at least that’s what it meant for our friend Lisa Shaw this year! We’ve seen similar projects featuring map coordinates, but Lisa’s detailed and lovely rendition of the central compass rose with its specialty stitches and sketch style really sets this one apart. Anyone putting down roots or who has cultivated years of memories in their treasured home would love this design on a panel or pillow. With her nephew and his new wife decorating in a vintage, eclectic theme, Lisa’s lovely compass rose design is made to match their style.
Lisa no only digitized this lovely design; she also created a BX installer to add an extension for the Roman font in Embrilliance Essentials, adding the degree symbol and single quote needed for the complete ‘HOME’ project.
Her primary project was a large pillow stitched in an 8×12 hoop, but Lisa was asked to create a smaller framed piece as a gift from a real estate agent to another family, meaning she needed a smaller, simplified version of the compass rose. Lucky for us, she’s included both versions in the free project download linked below! She posted the story behind the digitizing to the StitchArtist Digitizing Fans group on Facebook if you are interested in reading about the her creative process.
To make your own version, you’ll have to type your own coordinates above and below Lisa’s included HOME designs. To get your coordinates, visit https://www.latlong.net/, type in your street address, and you’ve got the numbers you need!
You can use any font you would like for your project. If your font does NOT include the “degree” symbol, the single, or the double quote, a little creative placement can save the day! Use the small letter “o” and move it up using the center selector for the degree symbol. The single or double quotes can be created similarly using a comma or two.
Lisa decided that the Roman font included in Embrilliance Essentials fit nicely with this design. Since it is a native font, she used StitchArtist Level 3 to create a font extension to give it the characters she needed. A font extension is a way to add characters to an existing font, including alternate characters. Installing the BX file from the project download by double clicking it or dragging it into the Embrilliance platform window will extend the ‘Roman’ font in your copy of Embrilliance Essentials to include the characters you need!
These extra extended characters can be typed or pasted into the text box, while alternate characters can be accessed when you right click on the character that the alternate has been assigned to. In our case, Lisa created the degree symbol and both mapped it to the proper degree symbol for those that cut and paste, as well as making it an alternate character for the 0 (zero key), meaning that there are two ways you can get the degree symbol.
This means, if you wanted to stitch 100° you could use one of two methods to get there with Lisa’s Roman font extension. Method 1: copy and paste text that already contains the degree symbol. Method 2: type in 1000, left click on the green adjustment point for the specific “0” you would like to change to a degree symbol, then right click on the adjustment point for that 0 again and choose “alternate > degree” from the popup menu!
You can see in the above example, the text box on the right says 41|”degree”0| 38′ 48.516 N but you don’t have to remember to type the |”degree”0| part – when you installed the RomanExt.BX file, the software provides you with the right click option. That said, if you copy the text from the Latitude and Longitude Finder website and paste it into the text box, the degree symbol should just pop right in! If it doesn’t, you can always use the Alternate character method. After you select and copy the text from the webpage, put your mouse cursor in the text box of the Letters property pane, RIGHT click and choose Paste – its that easy! If in single line text, hit ENTER. If in multiline text mode, click on Set instead, as hitting ENTER will add another line of text in multiline mode.
This extended and alternate characters for your native fonts are also listed in the font information screen as shown here.
The zipped file contains multiple BE files and the RomanExt.BX file. In order to access the extended characters of the Essentials Roman font, you will need to install the RomanExt.BX file – just like you would any other BX file! You will get a confirmation screen that the extension has been installed and you will now have the degree sign as an alternate to the 0 (zero) when you use the Roman font. How exciting is that?!
Also included in the zipped file are two sizes of the HOME designs with the compass rose and coordinating dividing bars. For those that want to further customize with other fonts of their choosing, we have included just the compass rose designs on their own in the 2 sizes.
This designs are provided in our native .BE format, enabling you to save a stitch file for any embroidery machine. If you aren’t already an Embrilliance owner, we provide a free method to use our software called Express Mode that will not only allow you to use any of the wonderful free designs found in our project blog, but also enables you to install and create basic text treatments with fonts distributed in our popular .BX format produced by many embroidery design creators.
To learn more about Embrilliance Express and for the instructions and links you need to download, install, and use our software with our free project files, please click here.