This repository contains the source code and instructions for running Monogram Magic. Monogram Magic is a free tool for generating embroidery files from an embroidery or monogramming font.
Please file an issue on Github if anything is unclear or left underspecifed!
- Clone this repository
git clone https://github.com/cvick32/MonogramMagic.git
- Create a Python virtual environment in the MonogramMagic folder
python3 -m venv mono-mag
- this command creates a virtual environment named "mono-mag"
- Activate the venv
. /mono-mag/bin/activate
- Install requirements
pip install -r requirements.txt
- Run the GUI
python3 gui.py
If we look in the fonts/Gigi
directory, we will see 4 items:
- a folder named
1.5in
- a folder named
2in
- a folder named
4in
- a file named
font_options.json
Let's look at the 1.5in
folder first.
The contents of 1.5in/
are pretty simple. There are 26 pes
files
that each correspond to a different uppercase letter. If you have an
embroidery program that opens pes
files you can inspect each file on
its own. If you don't have an embroidery program installed I highly
recommenced Ink/Stitch which
requires InkScape, both
are free and open-source.
The contents in 2in
and 4in
are the same as the files here except
for the change in sizing.
If the font had lowercase letters the names would be aLower.pes
,
bLower.pes
, et cetera.
This file contains information specific to the Gigi font. The only
fields that are used when running MonogramMagic are the type
and
sizes
field. The others are used when running the
structure_font_dir.py
script. There are various scripts included in
the scripts
directory that help with taking a font and forcing it
into the structure defined above.
Now that we know how the Gigi font files are stored, let's try to type
with them. If we run gui.py
, input some initials, and click Create
File, MonogramMagic will add all of the character embroidery files
together and output the new embroidery pattern to the Monograms/
folder. Note that since we have no lowercase letters we cannot run
MonogramMagic with the initials "abc" (try it to see what happens).
Under the hood we use the fantastic pyembroidery
library. This
project would be impossible without the hard work of the maintainers
of pyembroiedery
, so we sincerely thank them.
Now that we've looked through the Gigi font and seen how it works,
take a look through the RoundCircleLinedAlpha font and try to spot the
differences. One hint is that RoundCircleLinedAlpha is a
monogram
ming font while Gigi is a spelling
font.
I've included two fonts, in the fonts/
folder. These are just
example fonts, and I trust anyone who uses this software will abide by
the licensing of these fonts. If the creators of these fonts would
like me to take them down I am more than happy to.