This week we continue with more great alphabets from Anne Orr. Included are the child’s lower case letters (the upper case for this alphabet was charted last week), a longer set of capital letters. Plus there are two sets of numerals, one Roman and one Arabic.
With such a selection of charted letters and numbers it’s easy to personalize items, sign your work, or create quotable quotes.
Lower Case
Lower case letters are particularly useful when you want to stitch full names or quotable quotes. That’s for a very good reason. Capital letters all basically fit into a block; they are the same height and mostly the same width. When you write in all caps words look pretty much the same. DIRT looks just like LOVE– both are rectangles.
Lower case letters have shape. some letters go below the line, some are higher than others. They also have more variety in width. When written in all-lower case dirt is very different in shape than love.
That’s important because it makes things easier to read. You recognize familiar words by their shape instead of reading them letter by letter. You can’t do that with all upper case.
When you are stitching something you want people to read easily, go with both upper and lower case — it makes a difference.
Here’s the chart for this week’s lower case alphabet.
You’ll find fewer lower case alphabets charted than upper case. That’s because they are usually simpler and can be used with several different kinds of capital letters. To pick capitals for any lower case alphabet, pick capitals the same size or slightly larger and in the same style. Italics should go with italics, script with script.
You can pick fancy letters for initial capitals but don’t use too many of them. Pair a fancy capital with both a less fancy set of capitals and a simpler lower case alphabet for the best look.
Longer Upper Case
This alphabet has long thin letters that are simple in style and graceful. There isn’t much embellishment here. They would make great monograms and could work with this week’s lower case letters for names or short quotes. The chart is at the top of this post.
Numerals
Her are two small sets of numerals. The common numerals are first. The second set is Roman numerals. Roman numerals are often used for dates.
Since we don’t commonly use Roman numerals, it’s good to remember:
- “L” stands for 50
- “C” stands for 100
- “D” stands for 500
- “M” stands for 1000
About Janet M Perry
Janet Perry is the Internet's leading authority on needlepoint. She designs, teaches and writes, getting raves from her fans for her innovative techniques, extensive knowledge and generous teaching style. A leading writer of stitch guides, she blogs here and lives on an island in the northeast corner of the SF Bay with her family
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Keep stitching,
Janet
Thanks for the information. It was very helpful.