Free USA Flag-Inspired Scribble Trapunto Embroidery Design for Independence Day

In recognition of the upcoming 4th of July holiday, our own Erich Campbell decided to recreate one of this most popular designs in a more modern format for everyone to enjoy. This larger format design was created with sweatshirts and hoodies in mind, but it’s light-stitching nature makes it great for all manner of materials. Measuring natively 8.5 inches wide by 5.5 inches in height, this one is great for front-and-center placements where you want impact, though with the Embrilliance Platform’s native BE file, you can rescale to smaller sizes to fit your machine. If you choose to scale down, remember that the rows of ‘scribble’ stitching will be closer together and the puff effect of this special trapunto design won’t be as dramatic.

Erich first created the original piece because he was called on to create a larger, patriotic design that stitched quickly and made a big statement. His answer: this scribble-styled Trapunto design. Erich started with a simplified flag inspired field of stripes and colors, sketched some long, straight lines to create the ‘scribble’ look to each color, leaving roughly 1.2mm between the rows of stitching. This way the rows are just close enough to hold down the fluffy fabric, but not close enough to be a full-coverage fill stitch. Perfect for this vintage looking Americana. He then added his favorite font to create the ‘voids’ and lines that would eventually become the back stitched outlines that make the letters really ‘pop’.

Trapunto machine embroidery uses stitching to flatten a lofty or padded fabric, allowing the open, areas or ‘negative space’ to puff up and stand proud of the surface. This flag-inspired design’s letters are made to stand out literally and figuratively. With a lofty enough sweatshirt, you can get some amount of this effect just from embroidering, but to get a puffier trapunto effect, you can add a very thin layer of batting between the stabilizer (backing) and your garment before you stitch. The design will compress the batting, allowing you to trim away the excess when you cut out the stabilizer and leave behind a puffy, debossed look.

Erich created this piece natively in StitchArtist, so you can check out his objects and settings in the Embrilliance Platform. For those of you who aren’t interested in sweatshirts, you can run this design flat, too. It still packs a great graphical punch, even if you want to beat the heat and use it for accessories you won’t wear or stitch it on lighter garments.

Download the USA Scribble Flag Trapunto Design File

The design is 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.

We’d love to see how you use our designs; if you’d like to be featured on the Embrilliance project blog, click here to submit your pics!