Bernina Embroidery Files
Dagny Westall
As we all know, embroidery is suitable even for the very youngest. Our author Tatjana has therefore created a series of appliqu letters with baby motifs, the a with an automobile, the t with a teddy, the s with a soother, etc. The letters have appeared on the blog at weekly intervals. You can now find them together here, including free embroidery files to download. As well as the alphabet, there are many other baby designs. For example, the wishing star rattle makes a great gift.
Do you want to create a pretty Easter decoration? Is it just before Christmas and are you looking for an embroidery file for a gift? Are you invited to a wedding and want to embroider a wedding card? Or even a bridal dress, that you want to custom embroider for that special touch? There is virtually no other textile surface finishing technique that looks as high-end as embroidery. Perfect for weddings and other celebrations and holidays!
And you can also find tutorials on the BERNINA blog with practical tips on the best way to proceed when embroidering. Use the search function to browse through our blog archive for embroidery instructions!
You are the proud owner of a BERNINA sewing machine and want to show that? That makes us really happy. Please feel free to copy and use our banner on your blog or your social media profiles. To integrate this banner into your blog help yourself with the prepared source code. You can copy the code and insert it easily at the desired location in your blog.
There were many users V8, asking me to explain more about files and their formats/extensions etc. It is important to know what you are doing when downloading clipart, pictures or embroidery designs, loading them into V8 and/or use them via your USB stick to be embroidered.
Many filenames contain three characters, like .EXP or .PEC etc. In the BERNINA Library however, the Software V8 files can be found under . ART80 (5 characters). There are some other extensions too: files for BERNINA Quilter are saved as .ARQ, for BERNINA Cross Stitch as .ARX, for backups .BAK ( used with Auto Save), design templates as . AMT and there is more (text below). The extension with 3 , 4 or 5 etc. characters is a condensed file type. These abbreviations are more practical to use comparing using the full name (which is often long).
With the BERNINA Embroidery Software, you can open and save more: native as well as non-native machine file formats. It is important though to understand that different embroidery machines understand different languages, just like us people, from different countries. Once opening non-native designs in V8, it has converted the data into stichtes and outlines, to an ART Grade C file, and saved as such. There is also the possibility to choose to open machine files without conversion: but in that case not all can be changed, like stitch count, density( increase or decrease) etc, just scaling (limited: not more than 10%, because some areas may be too thickly or too thinly covered), edit stitches or add new elements. But with or without object conversion, machine files can still be saved in V8 in ART format, once they are opened in the BERNINA Embroidery Software.
BERNINA Embroidery Software V8 can open supported machine files stored on your PC or Laptop, from a variety of sources. First of course from your hard drive or external hard drive, because of the many files I am saving all the time, with a special files group for my embroidery files: either from my own designs, made with BERNINA V8 or purchased designs. But you can also open files from an USB stick or CD ROM.
A design BERNINA .EXP is divided into three separate files: the .EXP file, which is the actual embroidery, an .INF file (text) with information about object properties and a .BMP file (image), which will be shown at your machine. All thee designs are converted to your machine at the same time, which is required for actual embroidery. Always check if they are there. The difference between machine files and Art files is shown with the list above.
*My computer works with Windows 10: if you have a different operating system, or if you are working with Apple/Mac, there may be some differences in approaching the above.
Sources: Wikipedia Common
You can download the BERNINA ArtLink 9 Software for free. With this program you can open various embroidery files and export them in the .exp format for BERNINA embroidery machines. With that you should be able to embroider the logos you ordered.
For Auto digitizing tools such as Color Stitch, Photo Snap or Auto digitize, is there a limitation on the imported image size? I have noticed as I use color stitch it will automatically shrink the image if it thinks it is too large.
I talked to our embroidery expert and she said that Color Photostitch automaticly reduces the image size to max. 15 x 15 cm because a Photostitch motive has such a huge amount of stitches. You can however trick the program a bit: If you resize your image to max. 21 cm before you use the Color Photostitch tool, you can use the tool for a bigger size. But that really is the max. size it can do. Other auto-digitizing tools should not be limited in their size.
Another idea I would like to suggest, is to part your Photo into several pieces and put it together with multi hooping. However, aligning these pieces will be tricky and maybe, to cover the seams, you could do some free motion embroidery over the separation lines to blend them in. I think this would be the way I would do it if I would wish for a bigger Photostitch design ?
The correct embroidery format for a BERNINA embroidery machine is .EXP or .DST. Only these two formats can be read in the BERNINA embroidery machine. If you are a Mac user, make sure you continue reading below about transferring embroidery designs to a BERNINA USB stick with a Mac computer.
There are two reasons an embroidery design might not stitch out correctly. One is that the embroidery arm or embroidery hoop was bumped or bumped into something while it was embroidering. Make sure to clear the entire embroidery area both in front of the machine and behind it from objects that could interfere during embroidery. Also, watch the back of your sewing chair so that it does not bump the embroidery arm or hoop.
The second problem, is when a BERNINA user attaches the hoop BEFORE it has been asked to be attached. Machines these days are super smart. Wait for the machine to tell you when the hoop is to be attached to eliminate this extra hassle.
Yes. A secondary thread stand with a metal base can help when embroidering with difficult threads such as metallic thread. With the increased speed of the BERNINA embroidery machines, a thread stand can help the thread not get tangled or caught on the thread caps. Read more about thread stands here:
Yes. Embroidery needles are idle of all embroidery machines because they have a sharper point and a taller eye. Use an embroidery needle with any and all specialty embroidery threads. The special scarf, widened groove and enlarged eye protect fragile threads and guards against excess friction allowing trouble-free embroidery and decorative stitching.
If you use a Mac computer to transfer embroidery designs from your computer to the USB stick you will find an extra set of odd-looking files on the BERNINA embroidery screen. Please know that there is nothing wrong with the machine, the USB stick, or the Mac computer. To find the embroidery files, continue scrolling through the group of embroidery designs until you find the actual design icons.
Yes. BERNINA is currently the only embroidery machine brand that can compute the increase or decrease of stitch count of a sized embroidery design on screen. Other embroidery machine brands can only size up or down 20% and the stitch count DOES NOT change. On a BERNINA embroidery machine the only limit to sizing a design to the maximum size of the largest embroidery hoop.
My wife has a Bernina embroidery machine and I'd like to experiment with creating designs programmatically. I'd like to either find out how to output data in a format the machine's software will accept, or else find a free or inexpensive utility that can convert from a format I can produce (such as HPGL, or something else documented) to a format the machine can accept. My intention would be to output a file with one XY coordinate per stitch, plus instructions to change thread (pause for thread change); I don't need something to generate area fills, adjust stitch spacing, optimize stitching order, etc.; I'd expect to handle those things myself.
You could look at the open source Embroidermodder 2 and it's underlying library, libembroidery. At the time of writing, it doesn't support .ART, but .DST is a common format that most machines support which may work for you. Also, you could use libembroidery's .CSV format to lay out your stitches fairly easily so that all the format specifics are abstracted away and then convert the file with libembroidery-convert to an embroidery format that your machine supports. The .CSV format has the capability of specifying color changes, jump stitches and trimming.
Bernina's .ART format is indeed proprietary, but Berinina owns a software company, OESD, that makes conversion software (e.g. the OESD Magic Box). You can create files using a documented file format, such as .PES, and use their software to convert the PES files into ART.
According to this thread (admittedly a few years old, so maybe they've opened up recently) the details of the .art file format is closely guarded by Bernina and not made available to developers, requiring that all work is done through their official design tools.
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