Embroidery digitizing

Needlework picture (probably a chair back), ca. 1755–65 Mehitable Starkey (born ca. 1743) American; Probably Boston, Massachusetts Wool yarn and silk threads on linen; 32 x 25 in. (81.3 x 63.5 cm) Promised Gift of Ann and Philip Holzer, 2001 (L.2001.53.5)

This piece of needlework is a panel made in Boston about 1760 by Mehitable Starkey and passed down in her family until purchase at auction by Ann and Philip Holzer. Unlike most Boston needlework pictures, which tend to be horizontal in composition, this piece is a tall vertical panel, with two discrete scenes placed one above the other: the top scene shows three people harvesting grain; a woman at the center holds a sickle aloft, while a man at her right cuts the wheat and a man at her left bundles it. The lower scene depicts a landscape with two reclining deer flanking a leaping deer. In the background are a group of brick dwellings and a windmill.

Because of the unusual composition, Mr. Holzer surmised that, rather than a picture to be framed and displayed on a wall, the panel was intended to cover the outer back of an easy chair. He came to this conclusion after studying the Museum's spectacular Newport easy chair of 1758 (50.228.3), covered with its original wool flame-stitch embroidery except for the outer back, which is decorated with a charming pastoral scene of leaping deer and a shepherd and his flock. This panel was clearly made by a young woman who studied needlework at a Boston school. Although the chair frame was made in Newport, the needlework is characteristic of embroideries identified with Boston teachers. The needlework back panel on the easy chair and Mr. Holzer's panel are about the same size, and both designs are most likely drawn from similar sources. Boston needlework pictures from the period were usually completed in either tent or satin stitch. That the panel on the easy chair is in satin stitch and Mr. Holzer's is in tent stitch cannot obscure the amazing similarities of these two extremely rare upholstery masterpieces. [Note by uploader PKMThis last comment included with the original photo must be an error; the piece in this image is worked in satin stitch not tent stitch.]
 

Hey,
I'm trying to get some shirts embroidered, and they told me we could save ourselves a lot of money if we gave them the text to be embroidered in a .DST file format. Is there an open source program that can perform this conversion? There's a program that can do this on windows, but it costs $300.

Machine Embroidering
If you have always hand-embroidered and have now switched to using a machine, you will need to get some new supplies, including digital patterns, computer software and notions.

[edit]Design Files
Your embroidery machine may come with a few basic files or patterns to use. However, the Internet is full of patterns that will allow you to create the most unique designs. Some can even be altered to add your own personal touch. Remember that not all patterns work on each machine, so have your model name and number available.

Your best bet would be to download digital patterns. Some Web sites offer patterns for free, while others sell them for $5 and higher, depending on the size and intricacy of the pattern. These files come in various formats depending on what type of embroidery machine you use.

Some machines and their extension are:

Brother, Babylock, Deco --PES, PEM, PEL or PEC extensions
Bernina Artista -- ART
Viking Designer 1 -- SHV
Janome 1000 -- JEF
Singer XL1000 -- XXX
Wilcom -- EMB
Pfaff Mac -- PCM
A full list of embroidery machine formats can be found at Buzz Tools. Be sure to read the Web sites' terms and conditions before purchasing
 

Folks---

I recently stepped into my local sewing machine dealer while doing laundry today, and got a wonderful demo of one of the Janome embroidery/sewing machines. It's pricey, but nice. There's only one really huge downfall:

No Linux software.

Sure, the thing uses standard CF cards (with a PCMCIA adapter for the machine), so it's no problem for me to find designs online and get them to the machine using my Linux box. I do, however, want to do more than that.

Does anyone know if there are any Linux software packages out there that work with small-scale embroidery machines? I'm not too worried about whether or not Janome is supported, just whether or not I can avoid installing and tweaking WINE (the only concession to Microsoft I've made since going linux is maintaining my hotmail account) in order to use embroidery machine software.

If such is unavailable, does anyone happen to know where I might find the specifications for the popular embroidery machine formats?

Lettering can pose a set of problems all its own. A design with illegible or sloppy letters will distract from the whole embroidery. Sometimes, letters look fine on-screen, but, once sewn, are too close together and look crowded. Practice will help you develop an eye for how much space on-screen translates into correct spacing on the embroidery.

 
Click Image To See Larger View
 
When letters are computer-generated, the spacing around A, V and W can look strange. This is a good place to steal some space and reposition two straight letters,' like N and L, that are sewing out too closely. Generally, rounded letters like 0 and C tend to pull away from their neighbors, and straight letters like M and N need more room around them. Look at the computer image and see if small adjustments will yield cleaner lettering. A little breathing room between lines of lettering allows for letters with tails, like a lowercase G or Y, to keep from crowding the letters below them.

Do not be afraid to enlarge lettering out of proportion to the rest of the design. Perhaps, on another occasion, you used a design with a bouquet and a quote underneath it on a quilt square and it looked beautiful. Now you want to use this same design on a T-shirt, but because the knit will sew differently, the letters may look better if they are 5 to 10 percent larger. In addition, adding a little density and pull compensation will enhance their clarity .

One of the keys to understanding the relationship between the final embroidery and the screen image is consistency. Make it a habit to view the design at actual size and a certain scale, say 3:1, and study the difference. Always seeing an image enlarged does not give you a true sense of the design. A flower seen at 6-inches high on-screen looks perfect, but remember, its real size is half an inch. In addition to that, it is sewn with thread that has a thickness different than the thin lines of computer graphics. Comparing the two views on-screen and then comparing them to the actual sample trains your eye to recognize problems before you sew.

Sewing lots of samples on different fabrics is a great teaching tool for understanding the screen/fabric relationship. Learning to recognize the difference between beautifully rendered and mediocre embroidery takes time. The stitches should cover the fabric completely and have smooth edges. The fabric should not pucker. Any outlines or detail work should be precise. The embroidery should utilize the play of light, with the thread creating interesting textures and color gradations.

Taking workshops, sharing with other enthusiasts and utilizing the samples at your local shop gives you access to lots of designs and techniques. When possible, compare the sample with the computer graphics. The difference can be amazing. A stunning embroidery can be produced from a program that looked ho-hum on-screen. Your trained eye will allow you to differentiate a strong design from a weak one. You will learn to look for a design with well-placed underlay, correct letter spacing and an interesting use of stitch types. In addition, you can decide how much editing a design may need to sew well. You will also learn to see the creative possibilities of a design, and this is where the real fun begins in embroidery.

After studying a new design on-screen, sew a quick sample, then start asking questions. How has the fabric changed the design? How can these problems be corrected? Would a few simple adjustments, like density or size, enhance the piece? Is it clean, precise and well stitched? Study the screen, study the sample. Think of all of your options for making this a great embroidery. Study, adjust and sew, and soon your work will give you beautiful and consistent results

Today we simply choose a design and program it into the machine, but a decade or so ago people spent hours crafting intricate designs by hand. The first embroidery machines and software were very expensive, however in the past several years software has become more affordable.

[edit]How Embroidery Software Works
Embroidery software uses features like auto-digitizing, which is a function that allows the user to download designs from the Internet into her machine. When using the software, whatever scanned is digitalized and embroidered. Transfer the downloaded design from your computer onto a special card. The card is put into an embroidery machine and the embroidery software in your machine sews the design with a little help from you.

[edit]Find Cheap Embroidery Software
The Internet is a rich source of sewing and crafts materials. Software is no exception. Finding cheap embroidery software that is also high quality can be a challenge. Read the information carefully and look for hidden charges before you buy anything. Be careful, because there are companies that create unlicensed software, stolen content from the manufacturer called pirating. If you buy this software, the manufacturers will not honor the warranty because it is not really their product. For this reason, be especially careful about buying software on eBay.

[edit]Embird
All Embird programs are 32-bit applications and are available in free demo versions. They switch into complete versions after registration. Embird has several software programs to choose from depending on what you want to do.

The Embird 2006 resizes, splits, edits, displays, prints and converts embroidery designs and can be expanded with plug-ins. It works in either an editor or a manager mode.
Embird Studio is a plug in that allows designs created from photos.
Embird Cross Stitch is a plug in for replicating cross-stitch designs.
Font Engine converts true type and open fonts into embroidery.
Iconizer is a program that displays image files, and helps organize embroidery designs, photos and images.

Designs in Machine Embroidery is a magazine dedicated to machine embroidery, featuring articles on how to use an embroidery machine and the related software. Also included are designs for quilts, crafts, wearables and home decor projects. The company behind the magazine also sells products directed at the machine embroidery market.

The magazine founder and editor, Eileen Roche, has appeared on the television show Sewing With Nancy.
 

Machine embroidery is a term that can be used to describe two different actions. The first is using a sewing machine to "manually" create (either freehand or with built-in stitches) a design on a piece of fabric or other similar item. The second is to use a specially designed embroidery or sewing-embroidery machine to automatically create a design from a pre-made pattern that is input into the machine. Most embroidery machines used by professionals and hobbyists today are driven by computers that read digitized embroidery files created by special software.

With the advent of computerized machine embroidery, the main use of manual machine embroidery is in fiber art and quilting projects. While some still use this type of embroidery to embellish garments, with the ease and decreasing cost of computerized embroidery machine, it is rapidly falling out of favor. Many quilters and fabric artists now use a process called "thread drawing" (or thread painting) to create embellishments on items.

"Digitizer" redirects here. For the computer device, see Digitizing tablet. For the digitizer in Tablet PC's, see Tablet PC.
Digitizing or digitization is representing an object, image, document or a signal (usually an analog signal) by a discrete set of its points or samples. The result is called "digital representation" or, more specifically, a "digital image", for the object, and "digital form", for the signal.

Analog signals are continuously variable, both in the number of possible values of the signal at a given time, as well as in the number of points in the signal in a given period of time. However, digital signals are discrete in both of those respects, and so a digitization can only ever be an approximation of the signal it represents.

A digital signal may be represented by a sequence of integers. Digitization is performed by reading an analog signal A, and, at regular time intervals (sampling frequency), representing the value of A at that point by an integer. Each such reading is called a sample.

A series of integers can be transformed back into an analog signal that approximates the original analog signal. Such a transformation is called DA conversion. There are two factors determining how close such an approximation to an analog signal A a digitization D can be, namely the sampling rate and the number of bits used to represent the integers.

Sewing lots of samples on different fabrics is a great teaching tool for understanding the screen/fabric relationship. Learning to recognize the difference between beautifully rendered and mediocre embroidery takes time. The stitches should cover the fabric completely and have smooth edges. The fabric should not pucker. Any outlines or detail work should be precise. The embroidery should utilize the play of light, with the thread creating interesting textures and color gradations.