Resizing embroidery/applique pattern

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#1 MalteseLizzie on 1 year ago

I'm interested in making Merida's dress from "Brave". It has a complicated applique/embroidery on the hem (I'll be making an applique), and a Celtic knot design on the belt. I have templates for both designs, but I am not sure how to resize the designs on the computer for printing.
I know the measurements of my hem, and have tried using Posterazor but haven't been able to get the design to the desired dimensions. Does anyone have any tips for resizing designs like this digitally, then printing them to the correct size (even if it means sticking many pieces of paper together)?

#2 Penlowe on 1 year ago

digitally? no. I usually play with size in the print area as mine will let me print 90% or 47% or whatever. Low tech is my jam.

I'm so old, I've used a copy machine and just copied stuff at different percentages to get my desired size.

#3 CapsuleCorp on 1 year ago

My roommate does graphics so I know from looking over her shoulder that unless you have a program like Photoshop or Illustrator, resizing digitally is next to impossible. She even yells at me for trying to size up graphics in Photoshop that are already at max resolution - upsizing usually pixelates it to hell and it becomes no longer viable. We've wrestled with images for stencils, embroidery, etc and I know it's hard. It's really really hard if you just don't have the right program.

Graphics can be resized at will if they're vectorized, which requires Illustrator or equivalent. If you don't have the computer capability to turn an image into vector art, your only recourses are A, find someone who can and farm it out to them, or B, go low-tech like Penlowe. If I didn't have a person on the couch next to me who could vector every logo and emblem I send her way, I'd make all my stencils by hand like I used to - draw a frame on a piece of paper the size of the thing I need to create, draw my applique/stencil inside the frame, cut and go to town. But that also requires being pretty good at hand-drawing designs. I'd say the low-tech print-out is the better option for someone who can't draw.

#4 Bombdoll on 1 year ago

If you have software like adobe photoshop you can actually size the canvas in pixels, inches, picas, cm, etc. So if you know the dimensions of your dress and the hem length (roughly) you may be able to calculate the desired height of the applique design (if math is your jam). Supposedly Merida is around 5'4", so with that you could roughly figure out the height of the applique. Then you can use the maths to figure out what the height of the applique should be against your own height. For instance, I think the applique on the hem of her dress is roughly 8" tall (minus the border, which looks like a 1/4" or 1/3" tall). So if you're 5'1" (like me) the applique should be roughly 7 1/4".

If you've already done all this math and have the applique designs in an image and do not have access to photoshop or similar editing software, I can resize them for you. But keep in mind that the digital size will mean nil if your printing software resizes the image to fit within a margin. You'd have to remove the margin completely if you want whatever comes out to be remotely accurate.

#5 MalteseLizzie on 1 year ago

THanks everyone. I have photoshop and have resized to the appropriate measurements. It's pixelated as hell but it won't affect my stencil too badly. Now I'll see about getting it printed.