One person, a drawing board and a machine
Monograms is a trading name of Maksym Ahapodchenko, a sole trader. He draws embroidery designs and digitises them into stitch files, and this shop in Cambridge is where the finished collections will be sold, each one once it has been through the checks below. There is nobody else: the drawing, the digitising, the test stitching and the reply to your email are all the same person.
The shop sells files and nothing else. It does not sell embroidery machines, threads, stabiliser, cloth or finished garments, it does not stitch items to order, and nothing is posted to you. What arrives is a download.
How a collection is made
A stitch file is not a picture. It is an instruction to a machine, and it is only as good as the checks behind it, so the same six go into every collection before it is put on sale.
Drawn
The designs are drawn for the collection: a theme, a set of motifs and a family resemblance between them, so any two from the same collection sit together on a cloth.
Digitised
Each drawing is turned into stitches by hand - the type of stitch, the direction of the fill, the underlay beneath it and the order the colours go in. An automatic conversion makes a file that runs; it does not make one that stitches well.
Sized to a hoop
Every design is checked against the hoop its collection is drawn for, so that the largest design in a collection really does fit the field named on the page and the smallest is still legible when it is stitched.
Converted and checked again
The collection is written out to PES, DST, JEF, EXP and each conversion is opened again and compared with the original, because a conversion can drop a stitch type or shift a colour stop without complaining.
Stitched out as a test
A test run on cloth is what finds the problems a screen hides: puckering, a density that is too high for jersey, an outline that lands a hair off the fill.
Written up
The PDF stitch guide is written last: stitched sizes, colour order, the stabiliser the collection is drawn for and the cloth it is drafted against. The licence goes in the same folder.
What is on the shelf
12 collections and 211 designs in all, drawn for 100 × 100 mm, 130 × 180 mm, 200 × 200 mm hoops. Every collection page lists its designs by name before you buy, because a number on its own - "sixteen floral motifs" - is not something anybody can check.
The licence is the same for all of them, and it is the one that matters to somebody selling what they make: stitch the designs on to items you make and sell them, as many as you like, but the files themselves stay with you. It is printed in full on every collection page and again in the Terms of Service.
Twelve collections in preparation
Each of the twelve is written down in full - its designs named one by one, its hoop, its formats, its stitched sizes - and that written specification is what is being drawn and checked against. None of them has finished the checks above, so none of them is on sale. Card payment is not connected yet: every collection is still being checked against its specification, and nothing is charged for a collection that is not finished. Orders can be set down by email in the meantime.
Ask to be written to when a particular collection is ready, and it will be. Say which one, and which machine and hoop you have: support@monograms.live
Maksym Ahapodchenko, 106 St Matthew's Gardens, Cambridge CB1 2PT. The shop is answered in writing: support@monograms.live, within two working days. There is no shop counter to visit and no telephone line - a written question gets a written answer that you can keep.