Free Embroidery Designs

I’m wanting to buy a husqvarna Viking Designer 1 and I’ve heard really good things and a few bad things. I was wondering if there was anyone that has one and could give me some honest feedback?

There have been a number of machines called "Designer 1", "Designer 1+", "Designer 1 USB", so you might want to clarify what machine you’re thinking about. The current model is the Designer 1 USB.

Many of the people I know who do computerized embroidery have wound up preferring to have a second machine for stitching, so they can keep sewing while the embroidery machine is stitching out a design. That might be something you want to think about. I don’t do computerized embroidery (just hand or freehand machine embroidery), so I can’t really advise you much on this, except to suggest you might want to hop over to http://www.patternreview.com and read some machine reviews for yourself. You may need to join to read older reviews, but the basic membership is free and they don’t spam you.

My main machine is a 12+ year old Viking electronic, 30 stitches. I make almost all my famiy’s clothing, and it has performed nearly flawlessly over the years — and those flaws were my fault, not the machine’s.

I’m looking for an embroidery machine with many of the same capabilities of the Husqvarna Viking Designer 1, but for a much cheaper price. Any suggestions?

Make a list of what you like about this machine and take it to a Brother or Babylock dealer and compare the features and the prices.

Ideally – you want a hoop area larger than 4"x 4" and USB connectivity.

The larger hoop will allow you to stitch out larger embroidery designs. Whatever the size hoop is the largest design size the embroidery machine will stitch out.

Some users think if they buy an additional hoop that is larger than what came with the machine, the machine will stitch larger designs. Not so. The embroidery machine is computerized for certain features and that cannot be changed.

USB connectivity can be either a cable that connects the embroidery machine and PC, or a removable flash drive. These are what you use to move design downloads from the PC to the embroidery machine.

You can get the Brother 400se (sewing and embroidery) at Walmart that has a larger hoop and cable connectivity for around $500.

You may want to buy from a dealer for assistance in using the machine and for service of the machine.

You do need to have a PC as 99.9% of software programs for machine embroidery require the Windows operating system.

You can begin a collection of designs from the many sites that offer free downloads.

Create a folder on the hard drive and name it Emb Downloads.

Download .pes formatted designs for Brother or Babylock.

Most downloads are zipped files and have to be opened or extracted and then saved to the folder you created.