Free Embroidery Designs

I hate to appear like an idiot here but how do you keep track of files that you have downloaded from different Yahoo Groups? I belong to multiple groups that have free machine embroidery designs posted by different people at different times. The date that shows with the file (or folder) is "date created". I find myself opening the same folders and the same files over and over again to see if there are any new files there that I haven’t downloaded yet. We don’t always get a message when someone adds a new design to an old existing folder. Seems like I spend needless hours "looking" at the same things only to find I have already downloaded that design. Is there a better way of doing this that I’m missing? Call me crazy but at this point in time, it seems to me that it would make better sense for Yahoo Group to keep track of the "last date accessed" rather than the "date created". Thanks to anyone who can help me out with this!

it’s not an idiot question, but a good one. there is no tracking system within Yahoo that keeps track of where you clicked, downloaded or otherwise. I don’t think Yahoo will ever do anything like this either, since it would probably take alot to track each member’s ID for where they clicked and even if there was this capability, there’d certainly be tons of glitches.
sorry

this is the link to the groups suggestion board, you could add it, and I’d vote a thumbs up
http://feedback.yahoo.com/homepage/?prop=groups

good question

I own a Brother SE270D and just bought PE-Design Basic and am looking for free patterns I can download. Thanks.

There are tons of sites where you can get free PES format designs. Just a few of my favorites are: http://freepes.designsbysick.com/, http://www.amazingembroiderydesigns.com/, http://www.cuteembroidery.com/, and http://www.cuteembroidery.com/.

At each of these sites, you can download a daily free design (either exclusively in PES, or available in PES) as well as vote for which design will be offered the next day. There is also the option of paying a fee and being able to download all the offered designs for a set amount of time (6 months to a year, depending on the site and option you choose).

Likewise, there are many embroidery sites that offer sample designs for you so that you can test their quality before deciding if you wish to purchase from them. I strongly recommend this because there are some REALLY good digitizers out there, and then there are some that are mediocre or even poor (maybe even relying on autodigitizing programs that don’t do a very good job). Here are a couple great ones that I am a paying member of: http://www.artisticthreadworks.com/ and http://www.stitchitcheap.com/.

Another good thing to consider is going to Yahoo!Groups and finding a machine embroidery group or two to join (I’m on more than 85 of them). Lots of them offer freebies in their group files, and you can learn so much from group discussion. Just be aware that some of them have VERY high volume, so know what you can handle. And it is considered bad form to join a group to get the freebies and then leave it immediately. You could be banned from ever joining again if you do that.

WARNING: In case you didn’t already know, collecting free embroidery designs can be addictive. Try to only save the ones that you think you might actually use, not just anything and everything that you come across, or else you will have room for nothing else on your computer! And be sure to create backup files frequently so that you don’t loose all those precious designs should your computer crash someday. I burn cds like they are going out of style.

Futhermore, it is illegal to sell or give away any design that you don’t own the copyright on, so be careful of any of those "popular character" designs you might find. If it’s Disney and a freebie, it is almost certainly not legal. Buying a pattern gives you the right to use it, not to resell it. =]