Digitising Software For Embroidery Machines
Janie Leverone
As technology continues to evolve, digital tools are used in more and more applications. For example, embroidery digitising is a relatively new concept. Technology now allows us to create artwork in a digital format, which is then used in tandem with industrial embroidery machines to form the needle's path and make the design a reality.
With most modern embroidery machines, such as Brother embroidery machines, digital technology is built-in, offering apps and software that allow you to select and preview your design. Using this embroidery method also ensures your stitch is high-quality and leaves you with a precise, professional finish.
Before you begin the digitising and designing process, it is crucial to consider the garment you are working with. For example, the technique used to digitise a t-shirt would differ from that used to digitise a hat pattern. Flat garments such as shirts have smoother surfaces, so the digitising process should consider this. With a cap, the curved surface means that a different digitised design is required.
The type of fabric is also a factor to consider when digitising embroidery, as different techniques are suited to different materials. For example, Stretchy fabrics such as knitwear require a lower density design to minimise the risk of puckering. Different fabrics also require other digitising considerations as what looks good on one fabric may not look as good on another.
It's important to consider your embroidery machine's sequence when replicating the design. The standard sequence followed by most designs is to start with a placement stitch to identify where the stitching can begin. This is followed by underlay stitching, which is needed to secure a fabric design from pulling and puckering. The final step in the sequence is topstitching, which creates the overall finished look.
When digitising embroidery, each of these steps should be incorporated into the design process to ensure that the stitch is of high quality. It is also essential to consider the specific details within your design, as smaller details should be sequenced to stitch last for the cleanest finish.
The stitching angle in embroidery is usually varied, with the most successful strategies using different stitch angles throughout the design. To create an aesthetically pleasing textural piece, it is essential to consider the stitching angles in the digitising process, making sure you use multiple angles.
As a default, digitising programmes use a 45- degree angle for stitches. Using this basic angle can produce a design that looks one dimensional. For this reason, it is beneficial to play around with stitch angles when digitising your embroidery design. Thread direction also plays a part in this, as changing the thread direction multiple times helps to minimise pulling issues.
Before starting any digital embroidery project, conducting research and devising an initial plan is crucial. The foundations of your plan should consider the type of fabric you are using, what you want your design to look like visually, and the colours you plan to use. A simple plan can be developed with steps detailing your complete design and the types of stitching sequence required with these factors in mind.
Having a set plan minimises the risk of mistakes as through research, potential issues can be identified and prevented. Furthermore, if any errors arise through the digitising process, having a pre-empted plan with set stages also makes it easier to find the root of the problem and recover quickly.
A jump stitch is not part of the overall design, it's the stitch an embroidery machine makes when it finishes stitching one object out and needs to move over to another object. When the needle moves, the thread is pulled along, which can cause the design to look messy. Therefore, the stitching sequence must be considered when digitising embroidery to minimise the number of jump stitches.
The digitised stitch sequence should not include steps in which one part of the design is stitched, and then the next stitch is on the opposite side of the design as this will cause large jump stitches. When digitising embroidery, your sequence should work logically and from one side to the other overall to avoid numerous jump stitches.
As a beginner at digitising embroidery, it can be easy to rely on auto digitising. Auto digitising is ideal for simple designs, and so for starting, this is an excellent method to use. However, auto digitising is not the best procedure for more complex designs or an overall higher-quality finish. It is much easier for mistakes to be made when relying on an auto digitising programme, and in most cases, these mistakes are not apparent until the piece is finished.
It is best to learn digitising methods rather than relying on auto digitising to avoid mistakes and save resources. In the long run, having more in-depth knowledge and skill of digitising embroidery will help you achieve quality, complex designs.
At Stocks Sewing Machines, we offer a range of machines, including ZSK embroidery machines, which allow you to digitise embroidery. If you follow our top tips and tricks, you can be sure that your project will be a great success, and digitising embroidery can become a handy skill. Contact us today for more information on digitising embroidery or if you would like to know more about our machines. We are also industrial sewing machine suppliers in the UK, with a large selection of sewing machines available for purchase.
Master Series is equipped with extensive editing tools and various automatic digitizing functions, allowing you to create rich embroidery expressions accurately and quickly. You can easily and tastefully express organic designs such as plants and animals.
The Master series includes Maestro, Artist Plus, and Illustrator Extreme, and the editing functions available differ depending on the grade.
This grade is recommended for the following people.
Those who want advanced expression
Those who want to create data efficiently and quickly
Those who are new to embroidery and want to easily create data using automatic functions
Creator is a grade equipped with basic digitizing functions. It includes a variety of templates as standard, including templates for Japanese emoji. Custom designs using templates and free design creation are also possible.
This is a standard package that includes the basic functions necessary for creating digitized data.
Composer is a grade exclusively for name embroidery. More than 200 fonts are included as standard, including special fonts and fonts that can be used for small embroidery works. A lettering feature is also available.
This grade is recommended for those who provide name embroidery.
Xpress is a grade specialized for PC connection and data transfer to embroidery machines. Data can be transferred directly to the embroidery machine without using a USB. This grade is used to shorten the transfer time of embroidery data.
Embroidery machines require formats which Illustrator does not export. Some embroidery software can import paths from some formats which Illustrator can export. But just drawing the shapes doesn't really get you very far.
The embroidery machine is dependent upon a file which plots coordinates, in correct sequence, for each stitch. It's not just a simple matter of drawing an outline and then telling the machine to "fill it with stitches." Because there are many kinds of stitch patterns, all of varying density, the code driving the machine has to explicitly tell the machine where to insert the needle for each stitch.
This is a case-in-point example of why, as a general rule, I've always avoided mission-critical dependency upon third-party add-ons. Given that Illustrator is now only licensed via perpetual rental, that's an example of compounded dependency: Dependency upon an add-on for a particular host program, the use of which is in turn dependent upon your continued rental payments.
I'm not in the embroidery business. But it's among my wife's pretty serious hobby habits. She's having good results with Embrillance StitchArtist. Better, in fact, than some results I've seen in projects jobbed out to commercial embroidery outfits.
(The ugly truth is, just as in sign-vinyl cutting and other NC output environments, a shop may have the best equipment and full expertise in operating it, but their "front end" staff may still have little or no expertise in vector graphics. I have seen, for example, commercial embroidery shops take the clean vector artwork supplied to them, rasterize it, and autotrace it in their "digitizing" workflow.)
StitchArtist is offered in three versions ("Levels") of increasing functionality, with cross-level upgrades (at break-even pricing) should you find you need or want the next "level" of built-in features. The middle version (Level 2) is well under $400 and provides all the functionality needed for someone drawing the initial vector artwork in a mainstream drawing program.
So you can do the initial drawing in Illustrator, Corel Draw, Inkscape (free), or whatever other decent Bezier drawing program with which you're comfortable, export it to SVG, import it to StitchArtist with a single click of the Vector... button in the options bar of its main window.
In StitchArtist, she (not I) arranges the paths in the desired stitch order, selects and assigns the plethora of stitch types and detail settings, previews the result in an automatically-generated raster-based shaded simulation of the final result, and even plays the stitching in a stitch-by-stitch animation to watch for and correct technical stitching problems (ex: entry/exit of "jump" stitches). The Level 2 version also provides enough Bezier manipulation capability to make any needed tweaks without having to go back to the drawing program. When satisfied, she exports the actual stitch file in the format appropriate for the target machine(s).
Creating the embroidery-suitable artwork is straightforward for any intermediate-level user of most any mainstream vector drawing program, because you're not going to be using any software-specific "live effects" or the convoluted constructs they generate. You just need to be able to draw clean, tidy, accurate and efficient paths (don't autotrace), understand the fundamental constructs of drawing with Bezier paths (open versus closed; simple versus compound, path direction, fill rules, etc.), and otherwise bear a common-sense awareness of the physical limitations and requirements of the fabric and thread medium.