The Avid Embroiderer Presents – A Digitizer is a Strange Creature. And an early Christmas design just for laughs.

The Species Digitasaurus, Embroiderius, is known to inhabit the earth and is growing in population day by day. They are bipedal with a brain larger than the average craft person.  They are classified as humans but have developed as a subspecies (but still have those opposable thumbs).

They can be heard crying in their coffee cups, it is a wailing sound that echoes throughout their captivity enclosure. They reproduce at a rapid speed with enthusiasm and great vigor.

John Deer has been known to say, in response to the question “how long does it take to learn to digitize?” – a lifetime.  He ain’t kidding folks!!

I began my journey just about a year ago, right after Thanksgiving. Many of the freebies that I have on my blogs are my own creations. For better or worse, they are honest attempts at something useful for my readership. So, if you want to complain - - -

Digitizers (here-in-after called Digs) (just made that up), work with a number of things that are not necessarily familiar to most embroiderers. One that jumps out at me is “Tatami,” which is a method to give the stitch a cohesive look with a little bit of design, sometimes a lot of design.

There are digs programs that range from less than $200 to above $35,000. Some are more feature rich and some are, not for the faint of heart.  Computers may have taken center stage but the digs have to know which button to press at what time.

If you are considering digs for yourself, you need a few things such as patience, fortitude and especially a place to vent your frustrations. I am not trying to dissuade you from this exciting adventure, I am just letting you know that you are not alone in your incredible journey.

 Here is an important tip that digs must know:

The fabric that will be used makes a significant difference in digs plan.

This requirement has not changed with computer-aided embroidery. If you are working with digs, the first question they should ask you is 'what fabric will the design be used upon?' Here are some examples from the program that I use:








While it does have an 'apply auto fabric,' the above guidelines are from years of experience. You cannot beat history for good information.

The Freebie for this blog is



Tip: I had to keep saving, adjusting and tweaking these stitches. I have always used an alphabet matrix for designs that will have changes, even a few. Here is how it works:
tree.pes
tree a.pes
tree b.pes, etc.

Each increment is labeled for easy tracing of the stages. In this design, I got to the letter "R". The alphabet allows me to keep track of the most recent one, and I can go back to an older version if I have gotten things messed up,

This design is stitch intensive. I recommend using a fabric similar to denim in weight and texture. I also recommend using TWO SHEETS of cut-away stabilizer. With the outline, using a strong stabilizer is imperative.

BTW, I am not convinced that an outline must be black. I usually use pastels but this is a strong (color wise) design, so I compromised with a medium green.

As I often say - If you under stabilize, your project will likely be a little off and/or puckered. However, short of making a 'bulletproof' configuration, it is difficult to over stabilize.

Comments (3) -

Susans Stitches 11/18/2017 8:24:17 PM

Amen to the above. I have been embroidering since 2002. However! Am trying new things now that I'm retired from a paying occupation. I experiment and usually give away most of my projects. To what program are you referring with the fabric options? So far, the programs I have are very basic.

I don't know if other programs have this feature, suggestions for stabilizing fabrics, but the one I am using is Hatch. Hatch is made by Wilcom and I have found it to be terrific, frustrating and intuitive.  It is relatively new on the market.

I started with Hatch (John Deer has it available) last year because the price was within my reach. https://digitizingmadeeasy.com/hatch-software/

Download it and you will be 'hooked.' You can watch for specials where they may lower the price for a short time AND allow payments. I have NEVER heard of another embroidery program either of those things.

Pat, The Avid Embroiderer

Susans Stitches 11/21/2017 10:43:39 AM

Wow! I just did a search for "John Deere Embroidery" and was I surprised to see that name connected to Adorable Ideas designs, some of which I have. Thanks for the information. I'll look
at the digitizing link for Hatch after the holidays when I have time to breath. As for now, back to stitching. Happy Holidays.

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