Creating your own machine embroidery designs

You just got your computerized home embroidery machine and have done a few premade patterns on it. Now you have an itch to try your hand at designing your own patterns and have visions of maybe doing logos for businesses.

So where do you start? First you have to have a computer that you can hook up to your machine. Some of the lower priced home embroidery machines do not hook straight to a computer but to a "box" that reads "cards" that were programed by a computer. In other words you need a method of getting your designs from your computer to the embroidery machine.

The next step is to see if you are up to the task. You may like the idea of creating a design but be technically challenged. If you love working with Mircosoft Paint or messing around with cropping and pasting photos then digitizing will work for you. You must love working with computer files and know the difference between a bitmap and a jpg file.

Next find a free 30 day trial of digitizing software on the web and mess around with it for 30 days. Don't buy the first one you try until you have tried out at least 3 from 3 different companies. Here is a link to a page that lists 30 day free trials of most of the major digitizing software. Each one will have it's own problems like it won't write files that are compatible for your machine or it doesn't read photo files. After you have found the one you like, shop around for the best price. The only way those software manufacturers will bring down their prices is if people start to buy only the more affordable programs. I have not found a really good digitizing program for under $140 yet. Embroidery Magic sells for $99 (on eBay for less than that) but I couldn't find a free trial of it and I am not going to spend $99 for something that might not work for me.

Good luck in your quest and who knows you might actually find something you really like to do and be good at it. Also don't you believe it when those embroidery companies say it takes years to learn how to digitize an embroidery pattern, it just takes talent and a will to learn something new.