Hello! It's only me...

Just popping my head in to wave at a few familiar faces.

Morning, Beverly, Polly, Emily... :)

Bit of an intro for those who have yet to be pestered by me: Mad sewing witch from Over There (points at alt.sewing and r.c.t.q). Been sewing for a Long Time, and I make wedding stuff and historical costumes, and other things, for customers.

I'm soon to start on the machine embroidery adventure, so I thought I'd do a bit of research here and ask a question or two. See other post. :)

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX
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Hi Kate, welcome to the Wonderful World of Machine Embroidery! Expect your time to be quite suddenly full of fascinating stuff.

Reply to
BEI Design

Hi Kate, waving back. I'm the new dummy on this group. You know, surely, that I am such a coward and such a great-granny. So much about technical stuff on emb SMs challenge me - but everytime I'm asked for help, this very special group has generously given help. I've found the instruction manual for my new machine downright hostile, counter-intuitive and miserable. It opens with a chapter on How to Customize the Quick Access Toolbar. ( what?) then it goes on to ribbons. Ribbons? We know what ribbons are but What are they talking about? Mine has not been an easy journey - but the alt.sewing.mach-embroider very special people have been very kind and helpful. Polly

Reply to
Polly Esther

Thanks, Polly. This is very encouraging.

I'm not exactly a geek with the machines, but nor am I a Luddite. Embroidery machines will be a new challenge, but because I have both things I want to do with it and limited time because of customer projects, I shall have to learn fast! Reports have been that while this machine has limitations, it's also easy to set going. These are both points in it's favour, in that I won't be wasting time on unnecessary fiddling about. If I get the digitizing software, I'll play with drawing some stuff, or scanning stuff I'd like to use and digitizing it. If not, I'll just look for the closest thing in the right format.

I've seen some pretty neat designs out there when I want for a brief stroll in the freebies park. I LOVE the idea of being able to make lace, for example, but imagine that for anything other than small projects, this would probably work out to be way too time-consuming and horrifically thread costly!

Current projects (two weddings and a posh frock for a birthday dinner dance in November) will yeild plenty of scraps of silk of different types and weights to experiment on, along with some stuff from the big

18th C project (poly taffeta, but also cotton and linen).

I shall see what I get and then may purchase a mixed starter pack of stabilizers to play with.

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

Here are more sites for free designs:

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can use Embird to convert design formats. I have a registered copy, and find it very useful, as many places do not have designs in .xxx or .psw for my Singer XL5000, so I just download them in .hus or .pes and use Embird to convert them. You can use the Embird demo for 30 days free:
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hope to purchase the Embird font engine eventually. My favorite place for purchased designs is emblibrary.com. Well digitized and quite reasonable.

If you start downloading bunches of zipped files, it helps to create several folders with names such as "Designs - animals", "Designs - floral" "Designs - holiday", etc. and either download them to the folder, or move them ASAP, or you soon have lots of files with alpha-numeric names but you can't remember what they are. I also always print a hardcopy of the thread changes and a picture of the stitched designs right away, and keep them in three-ring binders (also labeled), along with the original files name.

I have made some lace. You stitch out the design on wash-away stabilizer, then just soak in warm water so the stabilizer disappears. Pretty cool. Depending on how much lace you wanted to create it's actually pretty thrifty with thread, there are more "holes" than stitches. When I made some I wound the bobbin with the same thread as for the needle.

You'll probably find several different stabilizers are a must. Here are a couple of Q&As I found useful:

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Reply to
BEI Design

Ambassador by Pulse Micro is a free conversion program:

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Reply to
Wayne Hines

Lovely! Lots there for me to look at, read, and even play with even before the machine arrives! :)

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

Thank you. I shall take a long look at that: could be very useful.

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

Wilcom TrueSizer

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of the two programs will convert to or from some formats that the other doesn't.

The only common format that neither will convert TO is Bernina's .ART files. There was one short-lived (about two months!)version of TrueSizer available but it was withdrawn and replaced. I assume there were some legal issues involved.

- Herb

Reply to
Herb

I had heard from a usually reliable source some years ago the reason many (most?) software packages would not convert to or create .ART files was the high cost of obtaining a license from Bernina.

gwh

Reply to
Wayne Hines

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