There are two different types of machine embroidery, the first is the use of a standard sewing machine to embellish an item using stitches. The second type is my favorite, it is using a computerized embroidery machine to create embroidery designs. The first time I saw an embroidery machine stitching out a design I thought it was magic, and I still do. The interesting thing is that if my friends drop by and I have something in my machine they will stand there sometimes for 1/2 an hour and watch my embroidery design stitch out. This of course leads me to the firm conclusion that it must be magic.
Machine embroidery is much faster than traditional hand embroidery. A simple towel can be turned into a magnificent personalized gift just by embroidering a name on it. You can find embroidery designs on the internet, there are many sites that have downloadable embroidery designs in most of the popular machine embroidery formats. Most of these sites will have a selection of free designs for you to download. If you have something in particular in mind it may be a bit overwhelming surfing through the millions of designs out there. So be very specific when you ask Google a question: "Embroidery designs baby's first Christmas." This will save you a good bit of time.
Most good sites will display a photo of the actual embroidery stitch out. If you find a site that show a jpeg of the design from the digitizing software you won't be sure that the digitizer has test stitched the design. This is important because and digitized design is not an embroidery until it is stitched out.
Due to the push pull affect of the machine while stitching a design it may look quite different once it is stitched out than it did in the software. So if you come across a site shows images from the software and not a photo approach with caution. See the images below.
Photo of stitched out embroidery designs.
Image taken from embroidery digitizing software.
If you are really creative you may want to create your own designs. This will take some patience to learn as the good embroidery digitizing software is quite complex and it is a good idea to make sure you can get some education in that specific program. The manuals are quite large and will instruct you on the various functions of the software, but they won't teach you how and why to apply them.
Happy stitching
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