Embroidery Business From Home: Business Model and Digitizing Training Course (Volume 2)

EMBROIDERY BUSINESS FROM HOME

Business model and digitizing training course

by Martin Barnes

Volume 2: Digitizing Training

Copyright © 2017 Martin Barnes (www.embroideryhomebusiness.com)

All rights reserved.

Published by Martin Barnes at Smashwords

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher and the author are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

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Chapter 5 – Basic digitizing

The three basic stitch types

Running stitch

Satin stitch

Fill stitch

Using underlay

Changing Density

Color changes

Repeat and flip functions

Centering the design

Magic wand and automatic digitizing

Sending the design to the machine

How to digitize – steps to follow

How to calculate cost and selling price

Chapter 6 – Lettering and Editing

Simple lettering

Choosing font

Changing Frames

Monogramming

Name drop

Editing

Chapter 7 – Advanced digitizing techniques

Other stitch types

Cross stitch

Appliqué

Variable angles

Stitch types cost comparison

Entry exit points and stitch angle

Resizing and stitch processor

Stitch repeat

Step length

Auto outline

Connecting the stitch blocks

Tie

Changing stitch code

Push and pull compensation

Inserting holes

Color blending

Digitizing for sequins

Motifs

How to get the Free Embroidery Designs

About the Author

Connect with Martin

In this chapter I will teach you all the basic things you need to know in order to start digitizing. This is a complete analysis covering all basic things a digitizer needs to know as far as the digitizing process is concerned, plus secrets on how to calculate cost and selling price of embroideries. You will learn how digitizers and embroiderers charge their customers, and the secret they don’t want you to know about how they price digitizing. It is important for you to know that possibly the majority of digitizers out there know much less than you will learn in this chapter alone. If you add the knowledge that you will get from Chapters 6 (Lettering), 8 (Advanced digitizing techniques) and the training videos of this course, then you will outrun most of your competition. The number of ignorant digitizers out there will amaze you when you enter the business. If you correctly apply marketing techniques and the knowledge you will get from the next 5 Chapters, then you will surely make a fortune out of embroidery. So, let’s make you a top class embroidery digitizer now.

There are many stitch types in embroidery, but three of them are the basic ones: Running stitch, Satin stitch and Fill stitch. You will use one or more of these stitch types in more than 95% of your work, so you’d better get used to working with them. In order to help you understand the difference of those three stitch types, I will present the same design digitized using all three of them, and also provide zoomed view for better explanation.

The running stitch is the basic stitch type in hand-sewing and embroidery, on which all other forms of sewing are based. The stitch is worked by passing the needle in and out of the fabric. Running stitches may be of varying length, but as a rule more thread is visible on the top of the embroidery than on the underside. It can be used to create complete embroidery designs, but usually it is just being used as part of a design, for example as an outline, or on top of fill stitch in order to tone the shadows of the image.

In image 2 you can see a design entirely made of running stitch:

Image 2 – Running stitch mouse

What is basically being done when you digitize a design with running stitch, is that the needle brings down the thread and embroiders the outline of the design, the way you have digitized it in your embroidery software. It is the simplest, quickest and most inexpensive stitch type, since it uses the least amount of thread, the design is being embroidered in minimum amount of time, which means less electrical power and less working hours for embroidering, plus the digitizing is easier than other stitch types, which also means less working hours for digitizing. Let’s see up close how the machine embroiders this design:

Image 3 – Close view of running stitch embroidery

What you actually see in image 3 is a close look of the mouse’s ears, as the small image on the right indicates. The little dots are the stitching points, which means the machine will hit the fabric on these points, penetrate it, and then go out in order to do the same on the next point. This repeated movement results in running stitch type. The distance from one stitch to the next is called step length and can be adjusted using the embroidery software.

The dash lines in my design suggest jump stitches. A jump stitch occurs when there are areas of a design that are of the same color, but separated from each other. In that case the machine goes from one place to the other without penetrating the fabric and without cutting the thread, thus it jumps from the last stitch of the already embroidered block (a design is consisted of a number of blocks which the digitizer creates) to the first stitch of the next block, and that is why it is called jump stitch. We will see jump stitches more analytically in sub-chapter connecting the stitch blocks of Chapter 7 – Advanced digitizing techniques.

Satin stitch is an embroidery stitch type worked in parallel lines so closely and evenly as to resemble satin. What the machine does is hit a stitch point, then hit a