I had a question on Youtube today about Hatch’s ability to do “knockdown” stitches.  While Hatch does not have a button for one click knockdown stitches, it has something better – MORE STITCH CONTROL!  Woohoo!  This is great because it enables you to do more things than just create one certain stitch.

Lets walk through it step by step:

First, go to the lettering panel and type a  few words (a name, maybe) and then click back on the select button.

Open up the EDIT OBJECTS PANEL (the panel of twirl down menus on the right) and go near to the bottom and look for the tulip and the words CREATE OUTLINES AND OFFSETS 

(make sure you have the letters selected or else the option will be greyed out)

an Outlines and offsets pop up will.  This is the awesome part because you have some good stitch selections and stitch control going on.  

If you look at the pop up, you can do object outlines and/or offset outlines, and each has its own selections.

Object outlines:  If you want the object outlined, then select this option by ticking the check box.  This will add an outline to the text in this example, but it will work for any object.  You can select the type of stitch too – from backstitch, motif, satin line, single run, stem stitch or triple run, depending on the look that you want.  The next drop down menu is for the thread color for the outline.  After that, you have the choice on what you want done with overlapping objects:

1… individual outlines – all outlines created will be full outlines

1.  common outlines – the intersecting outlines will be welded or combined into a single outline

2. trimmed outlines – the overlapped portions of outlines will be trimmed by the overlapping objects.

Each selection will give you a different look.  Go ahead, try each of them!

The next area is OFFSET OUTLINES.   Offset outlines are outlines of the object that are stepped or spaced away from the object that you are offsetting.  you can select the size of the offset and the number of offsets that you want to add.

Next you can pick the color of the offsets

The last part is what to do with multiple objects from the offset:

1.  individual offsets – all offsets created will be full offsets
2. Common offsets – the intersecting offsets will be welded/combined into a single offset.

Depending on the look that you want you can select either one – the welding makes a very cool effect.

Once you have made your selections, click OK. Taa-Daa!  Isn’t that awesome???

In this picture you can see that OML Embroidery is outlined (close to the letters) with a running stitch in green.  The other green lines are the offset lines.

Each of the green offset lines are separate objects.  That means that once you have created them, you can change them like any other object!  You can click up top to make them a fill stitch, or keep them as outline and change the stitches to a motif stitch.

If you want to do knockdown stitches – select one of the offset lines, change it to a fill stitch and then change the density – you have more stitch control so you can make the stitches less dense to flatten the loft of the garment that you are working on.  These stitches are especially effective with towels and “furry” materials – it makes the embroidery look awesome!

of course I played around with the offset lines a little bit 🙂

1.  I changed the offset lines to a motif stitch.
2. I changed the first offset line to a fill stitch and then played around with the different kinds of tatami stitches until I found one that I liked.
3. I clicked on Create Outlines and Offsets again and created an outline for the green tatami stitches, just to give it an awesome look – i changed the color to red, too.

There you have it!!  That is how to make outlines and offsets quickly and easily in Hatch!  Once you make an offset, its easy to make your own “knockdown” stitches with more stitch control!