Free Embroidery Designs

I Just got my Brother 270D emboidery machine for Christmas so I am new to the world of embroidering. I have purchased and downloaded a few fonts so that I can use them on my machine. I put them on the memory card and put the card in my machine, but here’s my problem. Each letter is a different design on the memory card. So how do I combine the letters to spell a name so that my machine can embroider the name all at once? Example: I want to embroider the name "Olivia" but the O is one design, then the "L" is another, etc. I can’t do one letter at a time or else I’ll never get the spacing right! When you use the four fonts that are on the machine, you can type in all the letters you want to use and then it embroiders them all as one design. How can I do this with fonts that I’ve downloaded onto my memory card?

You need a program that will allow you to merge designs. Here are a few that have good reputations:
http://embird.com/
http://www.designersgallerysoftware.com/products/product.asp?Product_ID=EDG-CW
http://www.buzztools.com/products/software_wizard/sw_be.asp

Embird is probably the most used of these programs and the least expensive (I think).
Embird also offers a free trial. It’s fairly easy to use, and there are tons of tutorials and yahoo groups that offer support.

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Since you’re new to the hobby, I’d like to recommend a couple of sites to you
www.artisticthreadworks.com has the best embroidery forum members on the net. I’ve been a member there since I started out with my first 270D. The ladies and gents there have answered every question I’ve ever had.
www.nitasplace.com Nita O’keefe has some of the most beautiful embroidery designs online and she’s a wealth of knoweledge. She’s a sweet heart and is always willing to answer a question.
www.sewforum.com This is a great community of textile artists and hobbyist. They have several great forums that where you can get quick answers to questions, free embroidery designs (I share designs there), and a great forum to show off your finished products. Sewforum is a free site.

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’ve had other Singer machines but this is the first embroidery machine. (I’ve never even done hand embroidery.) I can’t seem to find any classes in my area. Any tips or clues on getting started?? Any books or websites to look into??

welcome to the wonderful world of machine embroidery. first you need to read your manual, you won’t necessarily understand everything in there but read it anyway, it is going to make sense very soon. there are soooooooo many yahoo groups devoted to machine embroidery. the people there are so very helpful. i will give you a few to get started.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/News_For_Embroidery/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EmbracingMachineEmbroidery/?yguid=102878935
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/magicstitches/?yguid=102878935
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/snaggersstitches/?yguid=102878935

here are some groups just for the singer futura
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SingerQuantumFuturaEmbroidery/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FuturaEmbroidery/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QuantumFuturaHelpingHand/

the people on these groups will take you by the hand and help you all the way.

my favorite site for embroidery designs gives away 49 free designs at day. their subscription to their site is very reasonable. here is the link
http://www.designsbysick.com/amember/go.php?r=5647&i=l0">Designs by SiCK Embroidery Library

have fun with your new hobby.

Do I need to take classes for this? I saw someone had a computer program and from that it went to the machine. I just don’t know what I need to get other that an embroidery machine obviously. Do they come with computer programs? Thanks!

Two good machines to start with are the Singer Futura or the Singerxl6000 depending on your budget. Both have programs that allow the machine to transfer a design from your computer to the machine itself. You will not have to buy a seperate program. There are TONS of free designs online to get you started, and you can always buy a digitizing program later if you choose to start actually making your own designs. Embird is a good program to start with when your ready to do that

There are several yahoo groups for both types of embroidery machines I mentioned and you will get great help there

I’ve heard of a few alternatives to embroidery stabilizer… dryer sheets, freezer paper, even "sewer cloth" that plumbers use. Any others?

i would recommend you join a few yahoo groups. they discuss things like this all the time. some of the alternatives work and work well, other work and can damage your machine. the people on the yahoo groups are full of so much useful knowledge and they allow us to learn from their mistakes.
here are just a few. if you want more either do a search in yahoo groups or contact me thru my profile and i’d be happy to help.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SiCKDesigns/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adesigninstitches/?yguid=102878935
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/affordableembroiderysuppliesfromdpauls/?yguid=102878935
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/News_For_Embroidery/?yguid=102878935

those should get you started. i also would like to share my favorite embroidery site with you. they give away 49 free designs a day and the memberships to their site are very reasonable and they run sales frequently.
http://www.designsbysick.com/amember/go.php?r=5647&i=l0">Designs by SiCK Embroidery Library

good luck and have fun. if you have any other questions please e-mail me thru my profile.

I am going to get a brother pe700II and I need to know what kind of things I need to get in addition to the machine. Do I need a speical backing when embroidering, etc. Any information would be helpful. Thanks!

You will need stabilizer and depending on what you are embroidering on, will depend on the thickness and they type you will need.
a good pair of embroidery scissors, machine embroidery thread (this is different than normal thread) embroidery bobbin thread (again different than regular thread)
that should get you started, although i would invest in some cheap fabric or felt to do test stitching on because you will always want to test stitch designs, especially if they are free.
Go through your closet and find old clothing you don’t want or need any more and do some testing on those, or go to good will to get some cheap stuff to use.

there are several forums and yahoo groups you can join.
and you don’t have to join a brother specific group because a lot of the stuff is the same for any machine.
I have two brother 8200’s and a Happy commercial machine.
this is a very addicting hobby!

I have just purchased a Brother sewing/embroidery machine, Disney SE-2700 series. I keep reading about digitizing. If I understand it right it is creating your own embroidery patterns. Where on the internet can I find what I need to know about digitizing, and can I digitize with my machine? I appreciate all the help I can get. Nana

Digitizing is the creation of design files to use on your embroidery machine. There are several digitizing programs available and most will create files in many formats. ART is the only format that is not as popular and which only comes with specific digitizing software. PES which you use on your Brother machine is very common and most digitizing programs create this format.

I personally use a couple of programs to digitize. The one I like the best is Embird. You can have the option of creating most of the design automatically and then reworking it until you like what you get, or creating the whole design from scratch (this is called manual punching). The Secrets of Embroidery website offers tutorials as well as a free 30-day trial download of Embird so you can try before you buy. There are also Yahoo Groups which are dedicated to each type of software program to digitize and the members help each other with their problems.

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!

digitizing takes alot of work to learn. there are many yahoo groups devoted to machine embroidery. embird is a very good program and many people use it. they do give you a 30 free trial period so you can try it before you buy it. the site is www.embird.com
i have the pe-design version 4 which is the software specifically for the brother machine. it is expensive but will do alot. i also have fancyworks studio by pantograms. i really wish i would have upgraded my embird instead of purchasing fancyworks.
i would sugest joining some yahoo groups about machine embroidery and reading there before you purchase the software.
do you have a way to transfer embroidery designs from the internet to your machine? the ped-basic is an inexpensive program that will let you use designs you purchase or get free from the internet.

i wanted to share a couple of my favorite sites with you.
http://www.astitchahalf.com/index.html
http://www.designsbysick.com/amember/go.php?r=5647&i=l0">Designs by SiCK Embroidery Library

good luck and have fun.

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. =]