DIY 3D Digitizer
Digitizing your own designs is fun and interesting. It's a learning curve for sure, but once you understand the fundamentals you will be able to digitize multiple types of designs.You will save money because digitizing your own designs is less expensive than having to purchase predigitized ones. There are also add on programs that allow you to digitize photo's, cross stitch, and create new fonts. Learning to digitize will create endless possibilities for your machine embroidery projects.
Things You'll Need
- Embird, 3D Digitizer, or another similar digitizing program
- Computer
- Scanner (optional)
- Embroidery machine (optional)
- Internet Conection
Instructions
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Choosing a Design
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1
Find a design you want to attempt to digitize. It can be as simple as a coloring page from your kid's coloring book or a logo you've drawn.
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2
Open the digitizing software. Scan or open the file you've saved the design to, and transfer it to the digitizing program. The design should be on your digitizing screen.
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3
Study the design to be digitized. You should have a working idea of what you want to do before you start the digitizing process. You may need to simplify the design in order to digitize it correctly. Choose a clean design with less than four separate lines or designs. Select an image whose outline is one line and that has two to three designs inside the outline. For optimal results, choose simple clean lines that do not merge into others.
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4
Decide on your color choice. Ideally, you want to have no more than four colors when just starting out, and they should be from four different color dimensions. For example, if you choose hunter green as one of your colors, don't choose forest green as your second. As a beginner you might want to stick with darker colors so that you can see them clearly, but any color works fine. Once you become more familiar with the process you can add more colors. These colors are the fill stitches.
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5
Decide which color will be the base color. The base color should not be the lightest of your color choices, but certainly you don't need to choose the darkest color either. For example, if you chose red, green, blue, and yellow for your design, do not use yellow as your base color. It's alright to use any of the other colors though. This will also be your first fill color, and will serve as the outline. Then decide your second color, which will serve as your underlay. Finally, choose your third and fourth colors which will be your contrasting colors.
Digitizing the Design
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6
Make a lock stitch. You do this by starting at one point in the design and then "right clicking" on the lock stitch icon in the tool bar. The lock stitch prevents the first thread from unraveling from the rest of the design. Without the lock stitch the entire design could fall apart.
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Make an outline with your first color choice by using the original predigitized design as your guide. This serves as your base form and first fill.
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Add density by using your second color to fill the designs underlay. Digitizing software has a built in underlay process. Right click on the tool bar where the underlay icon is located. As you fill the second color the program will automatically fill the underlay. You will notice the design getting thicker as you fill with color.
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Fill the third and fourth color. These colors are used as a contrast to the design and are done after the outline and underlay are performed. Make sure the underlay is completely filled before you work on the third and fourth colors, otherwise you may have to start over.
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10
Lock stitch the last stitch of the design. This holds the threads together and works with the first lock stitch so that the design does not become unraveled. Your design is now fully digitized.
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Stitch out the design if you prefer or save the design to your digitizing folder.
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Tips & Warnings
Shop around for embroidery programs. Not all are created equal, and some are pricier than others.
Read the manuals and getting started kits in your program
If you exit out of the design without saving you will lose the design and will have to start over. Be aware of the copyright laws in your country. Do not attempt to sell copyrighted characters that you designed for home use. These require a special license.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit embroidery image by Ni Chun from Fotolia.com
