Digitizing Archives - Make All the Projects!

March 9, 2017 by ANN

I love digitizing

My first few posts here were about how challenging digitizing is and what you should think about before buying digitizing software. Those are important considerations, but I’m afraid I may have missed a really important point. I LOVE digitizing. It is an art and a science and it works with my brain. I even go to Maker Faires to share machine embroidery and digitizing with a whole new audience.

Maker Faire Milwaukee 2016

I believe that there are 2 main kinds of digitizers. There are those who are naturally good at the art and those who are good at making the software do what you want it to. You definitely need both to be successful, but I think most people tend to one end or the other and have to learn the other side. Personally, I couldn’t draw my way out of a paper bag. Somehow I have raised two daughters who draw beautifully, but that is not my skill. What I CAN do, is find cute art from talented artists who allow commercial use and add my technical expertise and make it a great design. I can bend the software to my will, which at times is quite easy and at other times it is quite a challenge!

digitizing is hard but digitizing is fun

I used clipart for the face and ears of this kitty – that is way beyond my simple drawing skills

I love to create In The Hoop designs – those are designs that create an entire project on the embroidery machine. I could put a design onto a zipper bag that I bought in a store or sewed on my sewing machine. OR, I can create the entire bag on my embroidery machine, including sewing the zipper in place.Other examples are Felties, Stuffed toys, Mug Rugs, Stockings and on and on.

All of these projects were made entirely on the embroidery machines. Each one was a fun digitizing puzzle.

In the hoop designs are often quite simple from a digitizing standpoint. Many of them are just straight lines. The challenge is in figuring out how to make them work. How can you make this Christmas stocking with no raw seams, fully lined and just a small turning hole to sew or glue closed? The short answer is – by layering fabrics in the right order, with folded edges in the right places. For the long answer, you would have to stitch one out to see what I mean.

People have asked how you do that. There is really no simple answer, you pick a place to start and then experiment, either in your mind or with fabric until you figure out how to make it do what you want it to. My Peekaboo line of toys took several years to figure out. I saw a sewing pattern for a reversible stuffed toy and started trying to figure out how to do it. It turns out that the Peekaboos are entirely different, but from the idea spark to the design, it took about 2.5 years and a lot of tests that did not give me the result I was looking for. It was all worth it though when I pulled Peekaboo Bunny off the machine for the first time. The customer response to it has been amazing and I am so grateful for it, but that IT WORKED! moment is what pushes me to figure out what is next.

Figuring out an applique is a different kind of puzzle. Which elements need to be laid down first so that they overlap correctly? Is there any way to make a run from one spot to another rather than a jump so that the machine doesn’t have to slow down, tie off, trim, move, tie in, speed up? What order should I stitch the colors so that I don’t have to go back and repeat a color, yet still have them overlapping correctly? Would that spot of color be better as a filled stitch or should it be another applique fabric? It is a logic puzzle, making all of the pieces fit together as efficiently as possible. This is the part that people either find tedious and frustrating or a fun brain stretching challenge.

The objects on the right are the top and bottom of the belly patch with a run connecting them – that has to stitch before the feet so that the feet look like they were in front of the belly. The run makes it so that the two pieces stitch as one, so that the machine does not have to stop and jump from one to the other.

I participate in many Facebook embroidery and digitizing groups. Frequently someone will ask “How do I ___?” fill in the blank. There will often be multiple responses that are completely different – and none are wrong! That can be quite frustrating for people who just want a straight answer. Just tell me what stitch I should use to make an applique! It is the beauty and frustration of digitizing though – there is no right or wrong way, just the way that you like. My personal “secret sauce” of Column width, underlay and density for an applique is just that, my secret sauce for MY perfect applique. My next door neighbor might think my underlay takes too long and is a waste of time and thread. Neither of us are wrong. Don’t even get me started on the options for applique tackdown stitches – single? double? bean? vintage? zigzag? Whatever you choose, people will passionately tell you how wonderful it is and others will tell you exactly why you are wrong.

Each part of a design is a chance to make decisions – should the tip of that arrow be a flat fill or satin stitch? Should the stitches run side to side? at an angle? I want it to look like the stick is on top of the feathers of the arrow but under the tip – how can I make that work?

You might read this and think I am nuts for finding it all fun. Maybe I am! There are many wonderful artists out there who do not want to have to think about all of these things. You want to spend your time figuring out fabric combinations, new color schemes, ways to take the same design everyone else is stitching and make it your own. Thank goodness you are out there so that crazies like me have someone to stitch our stuff. Or maybe you just want to get the project done – I do that all the time, I buy from other digitizers rather than re-inventing the wheel. If you read all of this and thought that it sounds kind of fun – you might be a digitizer in the making! Personally, I really like StitchArtist from Embrilliance for new digitizers. It is simple yet powerful. They have a TON of YouTube tutorials to help you get started and learn new techniques. I also offer one on one tutoring via Skype or other video platforms, so that you can learn from your own comfy chair.

February 15, 2017 by ANN

Digitizing embroidery designs for beginners

First, a bit of vocabulary – creating embroidery designs is a process generally called digitizing. The software you need is called digitizing software. The first thing to figure out is if this really is something you want to do. Many people get a machine and assume that they should make the designs that go on it. That is certainly an option and it might be the right option for you.

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Hang on! Are you comfortable with your embroidery machine?

I strongly encourage you to get to know your machine and how to work it well before you jump into digitizing. Embroidery and digitizing are two related but entirely different skill sets. When you stitch out your design and something goes wrong (it will, it happens to everyone, it is all part of the learning process), you want as few variables as possible. When your fill and your outline don’t line up, is it an error in the design or are you using the wrong stabilizer or is your tension off or is it just not really a design suited to the fabric you are using? Once you are confident with your machine and stitching on different fabrics, you will be able to test your designs and know if it is something that you need to change in the design or if it should be corrected at the machine. There are enough things to learn when starting out in embroidery. Using designs from reliable digitizers will help you through the learning curve.

Is that pucker from using the wrong stabilizer or because the design needed a tweak? My tester was experienced and had run into this before, so we knew that the design needed a tweak and I was able to fix it quickly.

OK, I’m getting pretty good at this embroidery thing – now I should start digitizing, right!?!

If you want to – sure! Why do you want to create your own designs? I’ll start with the only one that makes any sense to me. Do you enjoy working on the computer and learning new software, you have time to dedicate to reading manuals, watching tutorials and a lot of experimenting – and you have ideas just begging to be made? If so, digitizing might be right for you!

This design was at least 2 years in the making. I knew I wanted to made a design that changed from one thing to another and it took years to figure out how to do it.

Are you trying to save money on buying designs? Considering the cost of designs these days, it would take you a very long time to create enough designs to offset the cost of buying them vs the cost of software and the other costs involved in digitizing and testing. Even if you are paying someone to custom digitize logos, etc, carefully consider how long it would take you to learn to design and whether that time would be more profitable spent stitching for your customers. That is a cost/benefit only you can know.

You want to make designs to sell and get rich? It could happen. Reality is, as a field, digitizing is flooded. The cost (and with that profit) of designs is at an all time low and the competition is fierce. Back to my first point – if you love doing it and have brilliant and unique ideas, and you are pretty good at marketing – you might be able to break through. It is most definitely not a get rich quick stream of income for most people and requires many skills beyond digitizing. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, there are many successful digitizers selling their designs. It is just not as quick or easy as making a few designs and putting them on Etsy.

I wish!

With modern software, creating a design is actually quite simple. Consistently creating designs that stitch out well and achieve the look you are going for takes a lot of study, practice and testing.

You tried to talk me out of it, but I still want to do it!

Great! After all that, you really want to make cool stuff and understand what you are getting into – lets do it! I love digitizing and what it lets me do. There are quite a few very good digitizing programs on the market and each has its benefits and drawbacks. It is important to understand some basics first. On one end of the spectrum, you have auto-digitizing. This is when you import a picture and click Convert (or something like it) and voila! you have a design. Some autoditizers will give you a small amount of control in choosing what kind of fill you want or outline style, but it is generally a very automated, quick process with very little input. This sounds fantastic! I’ll have my entire clipart folder converted and ready to stitch by dinner tonight! If only it were that easy… This requires very “clean” artwork, meaning just a few colors, high resolution and little to no shading or shadows. Even given that, the results are quite unpredictable. Check out my post about autodigitizing here.

Auto-digitizing creates designs that range from awful to kind of ok

On the other end of the spectrum is manual digitizing. You can either work from scratch or import an image to use as your background. With manual digitizing, you create objects by setting “nodes”. Once you have those shapes, you choose what kind of object it will be – a run or a fill and what properties it will have. Do you want it a very thin line? A thicker line, a satin column? The control is all yours. On the one hand it is more challenging because you have to make those decisions for every part of your design, but on the other hand, you can get the outcome you were imagining because you have the control. It definitely takes longer, but in the end you have a design worth stitching.

All those options can be overwhelming, but they are the building blocks of a quality design.

Some digitizing programs include an autodigitizing function. Go ahead and play with it – for some extremely simple things, it might be a shortcut worth taking. I would never spend the money for a program that is only auto-digitizing. It just isn’t worth it.

Stay tuned for my Digitizing software roundup, but I’ll give you a sneak preview – My favorite software for beginners is Embrilliance. I love that you can purchase only the modules that you need and expand as you need it. Stitch Artist is the digitizing module that I am using these days.

February 3, 2017 by Ann

What is digitizing OR How do I get my pictures onto my embroidery machine?

Turning pictures into a design is a process generally referred to as digitizing. There are software companies out there that advertise that you can import a picture, click a few buttons and bing bang boom – you have a design! There are even a few embroidery machines that claim you can take a picture with the machine and transform it into a design. Well, yes, you can. This is a process called auto-digitizing. Some programs are better at it than others and with a very clean image, they might make a usable design sometimes. Did you catch that “might” and “sometimes?”

I frequently hear this question because someone has a logo that they need to stitch for a friend or customer and they need to get it into the machine. Logos are a particularly challenging kind of artwork. Sometimes your recipient will give you a clear vector image that will help the process along, but often you are working from a .jpg file or a screenshot from a website. To make it more challenging, logos are seldom created with embroidery in mind. I actually created mine with the idea that I would want to digitize it some day, so I kept my shapes relatively simple, limited the number of colors, and chose a chunky font. This is what I got from Bernina, which has a fairly decent autodigitizing function. This really isn’t something that I am going to wear to advertise my business.

Here it is when I put it into a program that exclusively autodigitizes. Ouch.

I have been digitizing for years and I outsource logos to someone who does them all day every day. The amount of precision and skill required to make a design look good at 3 inches takes a level of patience that is just not worth it to me. My time and sanity are worth it!

Logos aside, baby designs are very popular for many digitizers. Here I have a very “clean” image, which for digitizing purposes would mean high resolution and no shading. Super cute for a bib or a onesie, right!?!

I ran it through the autodigitizing in Bernina v8, which actually does a pretty decent job and allows for a little bit of control. To get this, I imported the image and hit convert – easy as pie. This is actually an abnormally great output. I wouldn’t sell it, but I might put it on a quick project.

Look a bit closer though – I lost all the gills on the fish – those were cute! Zoom in and you start to see more. That handle has some MIGHTY long satin stitches – those are going to snag the first time I wash my item. The area between the reel and the handle has some very odd angles going on. I am going to have loose stitches and tight stitches. All in all, it isn’t TERRIBLE, but I assume if I am taking the time to make this, and using my blanks and thread and stabilizer, I care about the finished product. Why else would I be doing it?

Just for grins, I ran the same artwork through another auto-digitizer, just to see what would happen. It only let me export the first three colors because I was using the demo version. The results speak for themselves. It picked up bits of the blue in the green letters and the edges are rough to say the least.

Here is the same artwork after I manually digitized it. I outlined each “chunk” (called an object in the software) and told the program what kind of stitches it should be, how long they should be, what direction the should run, what goes behind and what goes in front. My end result has a mix of satin stitches and fill stitches, the letters look like they would if you wrote them with a pen and all the details of the fishing rod and reel are there, just based on using different textures and colors.

Now you know creating designs isn’t a matter of clicking a few buttons. Digitizing is a skill that takes practice and skill. Stay tuned to learn more and decide if learning how to create your own designs is a skill you want to learn, or if you would prefer to stitch the many many quality designs available to download. If you are sure that digitizing is what you want to do, I highly recommend Stitch Artist, by Embrilliance. It is a great way to try digitizing at a price that will not break the bank. Check out my carefully digitized designs at A Creative Medley.

I was amazed at how decent the result from Bernina was at turning a picture into an embroidery design, so I experimented with the rest of the clipart in the set. Check out the results HERE.

February 3, 2017 by Ann

AutoDigitizing show and tell

I was actually quite impressed by the design that the Bernina software created in my post about autodigitizing. I decided to go back and run the entire clipart set through the autodigitizer and see what happened. Some were almost ok, and some would be a massive waste of time and thread. Here they are in no particular order!

Notice anything missing? My s’mores usually have marshmallow in them, not a gaping hole. The lettering leaves a lot to be desired too.

This raccoon is actually really adorable when you can see the whole thing, like in this In the Hoop Coloring Page

Sometimes random pieces just don’t show up when autodigitizing

The boot actually turned out pretty good, but those letters are rough

I like how it made the tent stakes satin stitch, but it really needs something to divide the tent from the tree behind it on the left side.

That hot dog will be a MESS to stitch out and the white of the eyes is missing. When all of the stitches are running in the same direction in a design like this, there will be gaps between the colors when you stitch it out and it looks very flat.

Those stars are something else! The combination of satin stitch and fill on the letters is never something you would choose to do.

Again, look at those letters. Lettering is something VERY difficult to get right when autodigitizing. The software just has no way of understanding what goes where, so you get bulging, oddly divided letters.