Wow, it’s mid-September and houses have been decorated for Halloween for at least two weeks now. When I was a kid, Halloween was just one evening long. (I’m 68 now, so it’s been a while.)
But I think the excitement of the Autumn season brings up a theme that we see all year round: monsters.
If you’ve looked around this site, you’ll see there are music-themed items here. Well, I want to start designing things with monster and sci-fi themes too.
So, I decided to start with creatures that don’t have copyright issues, like:
- Bigfoot
- Chupacabra
- Moth Man
- UFOs
- Aliens from space
- Slender Man
- Ghosts
- Loch Ness Monster
- The Jersey Devil
There are many more I could add to this list, but I wanted to get started, so I decided to create a Nessie hat, based on the Loch Ness Monster.
How I Came Up With This Monster Themed Embroidery Design
I’m not very good at coming up with monster embroidery ideas, so I used Bing’s AI called “Copilot.” I can draw, but I’m not a professional, and I don’t have a lot of time.
I had previously crafted Bigfoot patches with Copilot’s help. So, I used Copilot again to help me with my monster-themed embroidery designs.
This image gave me a template to start working on a Bigfoot patch I wanted to create.
The design was pretty detailed, so I ended up with something like this:
It wasn’t too big—around 11,000 stitches—but considering it will probably go on a hat, that doesn’t leave much room. (2 inches in circumference.)
Always Consider the Cost of Your Design
When creating any kind of embroidery, you must think about how much it will cost to make. 11,000 stitches is a lot for a hat, so I decided that if I’m going to sew the Squatch patch, I’ll charge a good price for it.
But I still wanted to make monster-themed designs for hats, so I decided to go minimalist with my designs.
Since I had black hats, I chose to use one color and sew white designs onto them. I went to Copilot AI and asked it to make a specific image for me.
“Can you make a black and white simple clip art image of a cup of coffee with steam coming out of the top?”
Sometimes you have to play around with AI to get the image you want.
Copilot’s rendering is on the left, and my digitized image is on the right.
Now, I had a digitized image for a hat that would easily fit and had around 3K stitches. Perfect!
Digitizing My Very First Monster -Themed Embroidered Hat
If you want to create your own monster-themed embroidery designs, here’s how I created mine.
I went to my trusted friend, Copilot, and asked it to make some simple black and white clip art images of the Loch Ness Monster.
As I mentioned earlier, you have to experiment with AI to get exactly what you need.
One thing I’d like to mention is that there are several different versions of Copilot online, each one slightly different. On my laptop, where I have Palette 11 software, I use a version connected to my Windows 11 operating system. On the lower right side, there’s an icon that looks like this:
In the version I have on my computer, when you click on the little Copilot icon, a popup window appears so you can input your request.
You can also go to the webpage where Copilot is located and input your requests there to get the images you need. I think Bing is testing different versions of AI to see which one people use and like the most. But that’s just my guess.
I had a great idea!
Instead of creating a simple Nessie monster design, I decided to turn it into a craft beer label. If you go to Pinterest (another great place for embroidery designs) and search for craft beer labels, you’ll see thousands of amazing labels.
Since there are so many craft beer businesses out there, you’ll be amazed at all the creative names and labels on display.
So, when I asked Copilot to make me a black and white image of Nessie, I told it to create it as if it were a craft beer label. Here are a few of the types of images it produced:
Simplifying My Monster-Themed Embroidery Designs
These images seemed to be fun and dynamic, but I still needed something simpler.
I had another idea, wouldn’t a silhouette image be interesting too? I asked Copilot to create another Nessie craft beer label using only a silhouette of the beast.
Once the hat was sewn out, I was very happy with the results; it only took two colors and the thread count was under 4K stitches.
I sewed the design out and the machine didn’t flinch for one second. That made me very happy because I now knew that my digitizing was completed correctly. Once that test was finished, I sewed it on the hat and everything went fine.
But Will My Monster Themed Embroidery Hat Sell?
This year, my wife and I had our first year at the local Farmer’s Market. We are not believers in starting big with businesses, and we like to start small.
There are two reasons for this:
- To see if we like doing it.
- To see what sells.
If you start big, you are under a lot of pressure. I know young families who start restaurants or stores, and they face tremendous pressure. It takes almost 5 years to make a brick-and-mortar business profitable.
So, we decided to sell mostly jams and jellies this year, along with some embroidered items. I embroidered a few designs on some items and put them out to see if they would sell.
Among the embroidered items, I had two Sasquatch hats and the Nessie craft beer hat. The farmer’s market events we attended were on Saturdays only and on the first 3 weeks I didn’t sell any embroidered items.
Selling the Monster-Themed Embroidery Designs
Farmers markets are harder to sell embroidered items at than craft fairs. The big advantage of a farmers market is that you’ll be there every week during the season selling your wares. Our number one selling items were my wife’s jams and jellies, which we sold a ton of. (We sold cases of that stuff each week.)
But you never know what will sell until you try it.
For weeks, I had Sasquatch hats that nobody looked at. Then one day, out of the blue, people bought two of them that I had sewn. I couldn’t believe it. A lot of the ideas I got for embroidering items came from websites I read before the season started.
Many of the sites, as well as Copilot’s AI, told me that the hottest selling hats would have local area codes on them. (Yep, you read that right—local area codes.) So, I sewed four of them, and only one sold.
But I sold all of my Squatch Life hats.
The lesson I learned here is not to sew too many designs until you’re sure you can sell them.
I only made one other monster-themed embroidery design, and that was the Nessie hat. As I put that hat on display, I said to myself out loud, “Man, there’s no way this crazy hat will sell.”
Ten minutes later, a young guy came up, looked at it, and said, “I love it!” And just like that, my first Nessie hat was gone.
Embroidery Lessons From the Crypt Keeper
Ok, you’ve read the good, the bad, and the ugly of how my first monster-themed embroidery designs adventure went. Now, let me give you a few pointers on how to make and sell your own.
Make Your Designs Simple
I digitize my own designs using Palette 11 software. I love this software because the interface is so easy and it doesn’t take a long time to figure out how to start creating designs. The real learning curve for me was learning how to properly digitize images. I took courses on how to digitize from taking John Deer’s Embroidery Legacy. One of the big lessons that I got from taking his program was that you have to plan out your designs. So, the designs I have are thought out and digitized in a way that will make the pattern flow from one section to the other with minimum thread cuts or jumps. This saves a lot of time and keeps the machine flowing smooth.
Test and Retest the Designs
Sew Out a Few
Learn to Sell
Conclusion
Creating monster-themed embroidery designs has been an exciting journey.
Starting with mythic creatures like Bigfoot, Chupacabra, and the Loch Ness Monster ensures that creativity flows without any copyright concerns. My first creation, a Nessie hat, has set the stage for many more unique designs to come. Stay tuned for more spooky and sci-fi themed embroidery, perfect for adding a touch of the extraordinary to any collection.
Happy stitching!
Oh, by the way, if you liked this article, please leave a comment in the section below. It would really make my day!
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