Adding a Patch to Cover a Monogram

My sister-n-law was given a super cute hand-me-down dress with matching bloomers. The only catch was that there was an "m" monogram on the dress...and her daughter's name starts with a "c". So she asked me if we could make it work and I said of course! Here are the steps I did to make this adorable and FREE dress work for her.

First, here is a picture of the dress with most of the "m" still in tact. I got a little excited and started ripping out stitches before I took a picture. 



And here is a close-up of the process of pulling out the stitches. I decided to cover the "m" with a green circle patch to compliment the pink polka dots on the dress and to match the green rick rack trim. I could have left the "m" alone, but the stitches were pretty dense and therefore raised and I thought you would be able to feel/see the "m" underneath the patch so I decided removing as much of the "m" as possible was the best strategy.



To do this, I used both my applique scissors and a seam ripper and tried to cut through the bottom stitches. Once you cut through the bottom stitches, the top stitches are relatively easy to pull out. I was able to remove all of the top satin stitches. The bottom underlay zig zag stitches were very tough to cut out. But they were also pretty flat so I decided to leave them alone.

The next decision was what size Circle Patch to use to cover the "m". Because the "m" was so close to the top, I knew I was going to need a circle that was wider than the width of the "m" because the top of the circle would be covering the "m" instead of the middle of the circle where the width is the widest. Are you still with me?



I opened a Word document and created 3 circles of varying sizes, printed the circles, and cut them out. Then I placed each of the circles on the "m" to see the smallest circle that would fully cover the "m" but still leave a little bit of room between the top of the circle and the top of the dress.



Four inches was the magic number. I pinned this to the dress exactly where I wanted the circle to stitch and then got my hoop ready for stitching. I decided to only hoop the stabilizer. I used a medium tearaway (I think...it might have been cutaway) and then I used spray adhesive to position the dress where I wanted it.

The next step was crucial to getting the right placement. Once everything was hooped and ready to go...I loaded the circle patch design on my machine and used the layout buttons to move my design on the hoop so it would stitch exactly where I wanted it to.



I thought positioning the top center needle position would be easiest. I then used my arrow buttons to move the needle until it was exactly on the edge of the circle that I had pinned in place.



I even lowered my needle to double check that it was lined up. I checked the bottom, right, and left boundaries as well. Once I was pleased with the location, I removed my cut out circle template and stitched my first placement line for the circle patch.



You can see in this picture how the "m" is mostly covered by the top of the circle patch but there is still room to see some of the dress in between the circle patch and the top of the dress. Mission accomplished. :)

The green fabric I used for the patch was pretty thin and I was afraid you would still be able to feel part of the underlay stitches of the "m" so I tacked down a layer of flannel before I tacked down my green fabric layer.

After the circle patch finished...I stitched the monogram in a pink thread to match the polka dots.



And there you have it...a personalized hand-me-down dressed re-worked for another sweet girl.



I hope this step by step blog helps you recreate something too!