Last year I got the crazy notion in my head that I needed an embroidery machine. I didn't have any specific project in mind or anything like that I just figured I needed to expand my sewing machine collection to include an embroidery machine. I started looking and soon realized that embroidery machines were expensive new. So I turned to trusty Craigslist. Every couple of days or so I would go out and see what was out there and while there were good deals there just wasn't that mother of all deals out there.
After a few weeks of this I moved on and didn't think about it until a couple months later when I on a whim decided to take a look again. I couldn't believe it, there was an embroidery machine on there for $50. I immediately said I had to have it. And then I thought to myself why is this so cheap. After a few back and forth messages with the seller I found the reason it was so cheap. It wouldn't sew. I was disappointed but decided to ask a few clarifying questions to see if I could figure out if it was a quick fix. Well, my perseverance paid off. Turns out after getting the machine home and doing some quick troubleshooting on my own I discovered the foot pedal was broken and that's why the machine wouldn't sew. Score! Now that I had the machine I started reading everything on embroidery and embroidery designs.
What I found is that I wanted to be able to create my own designs for embroidery similar to the flexibility that I have with my Silhouette Cameo. I was able to do a bit of design creation in the native software that came with my machine but it didn't allow me to do everything I wanted. So I started looking at digitizing software.
Man was there sticker shock there. I couldn't believe how expensive these programs were. I ended up trying about 10 different free trials and was overwhelmed. I didn't understand at all what I was doing.
Enter Craftys.com. I signed up for the class Digitizing Machine Embroidery Designs with Cookie Gaynor. This was exactly what I needed. I ended up watching the first lesson of this class and then went back to some of the digitizing software I had downloaded previously and couldn't believe I was actually understanding this. I was super excited! After about a day of playing around with all the different software I ended up deciding on Embird. I purchased Embird Studio and the Digitizing Tools plug in from Secrets of Embroidery. After a lot of searching I found this site had the best prices.
In the class Cookie has us start by creating our own continuous design redwork. This involves tracing the design with a series of clicks and switching back and forth between straight lines and curved lines. After watching this I asked myself why wouldn't you just use the auto digitizing feature for something this simple. I had a good picture to work from and there wasn't a ton of detail this should have been perfect for this right? Wrong. As you can see below this item wasn't going to have a continuous design and instead of being redwork this was a filled design.
So I set off to follow the instructions Cookie provides in the class. Everything was going great until I went to retrace the initial line I did. Embird kept thinking I was trying to edit previously placed stitches. After having this happen 4 or 5 times I was getting really frustrated. Especially when Cookie made it looked so easy. After doing some searching in the program I found a setting under the nodes that allowed me to uncheck editing all nodes. This made it so that only the last click I made was editable. After making this change I cruised around the design. This is what my finished design looked like.
I couldn't believe how easy it was once I had all the settings right in the program as well as knowing exactly how to digitize a redwork design. The next step was to ensure it would stitch out in one continuous line. To do this I used the stitch simulator in my embroidery software. Once I verified it was going to stitch in one continuous it was time to bring it to my machine and stitch it out.
I used some light weight quilter's cotton with a medium weight stabilizer to test this out. I used my small 4x4 hoop.
This was a super gratifying project and a perfect introduction into digitizing. I am looking forward to finishing the rest of the class on Craftsy.com and moving to creating my own designs!
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