Free Embroidery Designs

What is the best sewing machine to purchase to stitch words onto shirts and hoodys?

you didn’t say how big you want the letters and words. are you planning on doing this commercially? most home embroidery machines will void the warranty if you use it commercially. i’ve used the janome, pfaff, viking and brother embroidery machines. i personally prefer the brother line. i still haven’t read completely thru the manual. it is really easy to use. my machine is a ult2002d and i have heard that the new brother self threading is tricky to learn to use. i’ve heard good things about the brother se270d that walmart sells for $350 is a good machine. if i remember right it comes with a 5" x 7" hoop. since you basically want the machine for lettering i would suggest purchasing a hoop-it-all for your machine. www.hoopitall.com it will give you a much larger embroidery area without having to re-hoop. i will also say i haven’t really heard anything good about the singer embroidery machine. there are many yahoo groups for machine embroidery. some are machine specific. you may want to search yahoo groups for the specific brand of machine you are looking at and see what the people on the yahoo groups think of their machines.

here are a couple of embroidery websites i would like to share with you.
http://www.astitchahalf.com/ puts 5 different fonts on sale each week for $3 for all 5 sets.
http://www.designsbysick.com/amember/go.php?r=5647&i=l0">Designs by SiCK Embroidery Library has many fun fonts. they have 49 free designs per day and the membership fee to all the designs on their site is very reasonable.

good luck and if i can be of further assistance please feel free to e-mail me from my profile.

I am looking to buy an embroidery machine. All I want to do is monogramming, like on ribbon. Do I really need to buy an expensive machine or can I get away with something under $500.00. And if I really don’t need an expensive machine, what machine would you recommend. Thank you

it depends on how large you need the monograms to be. i have a kenmore (made by janome) that isn’t even an embroidery machine but will do small (probably about 1/4 inch) lettering. if you do need an embroidery machine you could go with just a 4X4 embroidery field. i perfer brother machines for embroidery. walmart sells one that is a basic embriodery machine. it will have a couple of fonts with it. i haven’t really checked it out because i have a brother ult2002D. i have been watching some of the prices on e-bay lately and you may want to consider a used machine. here is a great site for embroidery designs. they give away 49 free designs a day. they also give away a free font ocassionally if you joing their yahoo group.
http://www.designsbysick.com/amember/go.php?r=5647&i=l0">Designs by SiCK Embroidery Library

have fun with your new adventure.

How do I connect font characters to spell a word? I want to embroider my daughters name on something using a font I downloaded from the internet. I cannot group the characters together on my machine. Is there any way to do this?
Thank you so much! That is helpful. I wish I could do it with what I have 🙁

I am afraid not. You can combine the letters already built into the machine.

You will need an editing software program to combine the letters or do one at a time.

If doing one at a time is the only option, bring up each letter and send to the card.

Then make a sample by stitching out each letter, noting the size and then determine how far to space each letter. Start by making a cross hair with a pen for each one – this will help you to find the center of each letter after stitching.

Remember, the center for the letters a and y (as examples) are going to differ as will as upper and lower case letters.

You can use the jog feature on the embroidery machine to calculate the perimeter of each letter.

There is a trial of Embird that may be of help as well as a tutorial for lettering at ABC Embroidery (free).

http://www.secretsof.com/content/1853

http://www.annaboveembroidery.com/usemfo.html

Feel free to e-mail me with any questions at any time.

I am interested in purchasing lettering software for my embroidery machine and wondered if anyone had any recommendations? I do not want to spend a lot of money.

I highly recommend Embird. You can buy it in portions. They not only have Font Engine which will auto digitize all true type fonts but also sell nice alphabets for 10-15.00 each in your machine format You would just need to get Embird Basic and the alphabets of your choice..- haven’t ck’d price lately but that is prob in ball park. If you are doing a lot of lettering and want a variety of fonts to work with though Font Engine would save you money over time..
Also have you thought of just going to some of the embroidery groups on Yahoo – like Hooked on Embroidery – there are many good digitizers on there that give away free sample designs and sell excellent designs for not much money. You can get alphabets there too.
Good Luck! Jill

I need the conversion chart for this embroidery thread. I have looked everywhere on the internet and there has got to be one somewhere.

I did a llot of looking

If you are not able to find what you are looking for with our free online thread conversion tool please feel free to try out the My Thread Box software which offers you different levels of accuracy in matching threads from over 70 different thread manufactures. Another option is a free download the thread converter pro for free which converts between 14 thread manufacturers. We also have many other embroidery software packages available from digitizing to lettering.
This site show a lot of manufactures but none with your brand.

http://needlepointers.com/ShowArticles.aspx?NavID=1707

This link has a lot of charts but you will have to click on the picture to find the one you need. When you get to the bottom of the first page look just below it to see more and that will continue until they have no more pages to go to

http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&va=conversion+chart+for+thread+embroidery+thread

This may be the last of the conversions and I hop you can find it in there otherwise please enter threadRus into your search and see if this or the paper work wrapping you floss gives the name of the manufacturer.

I do wish I could have been of more help……..Sorry

I have a Brothers embroidery machine, and im trying to figure out how to digitize images. I have no idea where to start, which program do i need? where do i get it from? Is there a easy to read manual for digitizing? im not experienced, any help will be great!

to answer your first question, in order to make a quality design that’s worth your thread, stabilizer, fabric and time you will need to do what is called manual punch digitizing.
If you are an artist you are a step ahead as you can use your own pictures, but if not you will have to find clipart that the aritist allows to be used OR you can subcribe to many different clipart sites to get your images.

Think of digitizing as kind of like tracing a picture only a lot more steps and a lot harder! That’s the best I can describe it.
It takes a lot of patience and trial and error and MANY test stitching sessions of a design to make sure there is nothing that needs to be adjusted.

Now for the best programs-well that’s a loaded question.
Most of this decision depends on what you want the software for. None of them are "easy" at first, but again with a lot of patience and persisitance anyone can accomplish great designs.
Prices range from free to thousands of dollars, of course the cheaper the program the more frustrated you are probably going to get with using it.

I personally use Embird. This is a great program because you buy the "basic" package, and then add plug ins that you want. For digitizing you will need the Studio plug in, and if you are wanting to do quick and simple lettering from any TTF you will want their Font Engine plug in too.

I suggest if you are wanting to play around with digitizing, Sophie Sews is a free software. Of course not the best, but it’s free and will give you a feel for what digitizing is all about.
I have to warn you that the last I heard they were still in the building/testing phase so there are are glitches and bugs but nothing that will cause your computer to go *poof*

I would also suggest a sewing/embroidery forum
I belong to a few, but my favorite is sewforum provided by allbrands
there are thousands of very helpful members there and a lot of free designs.
i post a lot of my work there as free samples from our website.

If you do a search for Sophie Sews and Sew Forum you should be able to find links to both.

Hope this isn’t info overload and that it helps!

flipflopsindecember

I have a Janome MC 9500 and need to convert designs to .jef format as well as be able to marry designs with lettering – shape of lettering andplacement of designs. I’d love digitizing capability as well but I know that comes with a hefty price.
I have been online and downloaded trial software but I really would like to purchase someting worthwhile. Thank you for your suggestions….

Try Wilcom Truesizer. It’s free – I know there is a link on http://www.dekatzenembroidery.co.za

Embroidery Educator Diane Brown gives a video tutorial on using AnnTheGran’s Alphabet Xpress to add text to a design.

Duration : 0:1:15

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Embroidery software educator Soni Grint shows highlights of the packages contained in 4D Professional. She shows a jacket embellished with Shapes, a table runner created with Encore and lettering font samples including QuickFonts created from computer TrueType fonts, all in 4D Embroidery Extra. Another jacket demonstrates editing features from 4D Stitch Editor, as do morphing samples. A sampler, designs and text were created in 4D Cross Stitcher.

Duration : 0:7:28

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Embroidery software educator Soni Grint shows highlights of the five exclusive modules contained in creative 4D Suite. Make every design unique with creative 4D Design Creator using special fill effects such as contour and motif fill. Transform photos using monochrome and 4-color techniques in creative 4D PictureStitch. Embellish fabric with machine or personal motifs with creative 4D Fabric Decorator. Create your own fonts using creative 4D Font Digitizing. Use creative 4D Stitch Artist to create stitches for many Pfaff sewing machines. Finally, use 4D Organizer to catalog your designs, 4D Vision to preview designs before embroidery or 4D Design Aligner to split larger designs for any hoop. (available in other packages)

Duration : 0:9:44

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