My Hand Embroidery
I’ve been looking to purchase a new sewing machine, my old one has very few options and a lot of tension problems. I have wanted one that can also do embroidery, but I want to do my own designs. This is not as easy to come by as you would think, especially when you are working on a mac computer. You would think you could use something in adobe’s creative suite to edit embroidery designs. I have already spent lots of money on these programs and years out of my life learning how to use them. This is possible, but the software is geared towards having a custom embroidery shop and the cost is astronomical.
After some searching I found Embroidery software for the mac and it just happens to be software for what’s called the “home sewer.” They have a program that converts files to any sewing machine format. There are a lot of formats. A lot. Unfortunately this software is only for existing embroidery files, i.e. sets of embroidery designs that come prepackaged. While this is certainly a worthwhile program, reasonably priced and something I will purchase in the future, it only gets me halfway there.
I still need a program that I can create embroidery in. Through a process called digitizing you take your artwork and using it as a template, create a digital embroidery pattern. The process involves laying out how the needle will travel through the design, the kind of stitches the machine will use, the direction of the stitches, the color of thread, and I assume some other stuff. The whole process is like drawing without lifting your pencil off the paper. Affordable software for digitizing on the mac, as of yet, does not exist.
I contacted Embroidery software for the mac, to see if they could answer any of my questions about creating my own designs. They suggested hiring a local embroidery shop to do the digitizing. I really can’t find one, so if any one knows of a custom embroidery shop in south jersey that they like, please let me know. I will say Brian at www.macemb.com was very helpful with the myriad of questions I had. It is surprising to find such excellent customer service. Someone who takes the time to respond, is knowledgeable, and personable. He is also working on a software program for digitizing on the mac. I would love to hear from anyone who works on a mac using embroidery. Please share your experience.
Orange Slice Art 