imagine being able to easily turn any image you see anywhere into embroidery with digitizing whether it be a child's drawing a customer's logo or just something that looks beautiful hi I'm John Deere the world's most awarded embroidery digitizer and welcome to embroidery leacy embroidery digitizing 101 course if this is your first time trying to learn how to digitize then you've lucked out you're in the right place and saved yourself a lot of time and frustration for many of you though I know it isn't the first time you've tried to learn how to create and edit your own embroidery designs with digitizing now the first thing I want to mention is if you failed to learn how to digitize in the past you're not alone and it's not your fault there's a lot of conflicting information out there from unqualified people and it can be very confusing if you're unsure whether or not you can succeed at digitizing you should know that I've heard this thousands of times before and I want to put those fears to rest right now you can do this you just need the right person to explain it to you more likely the missing piece of the puzzle is digitizing theory and I'm honored to be able to teach you the ropes in this short course as a fourth generation embroiderer I began my career as a digitizer at the age of 17 in my grandparents embroidery Factory by apprenticing to become a manual panograph shiftly puncher now in case you're wondering what that means it means that I learned how to digitize or create designs manually one stitch at a time on this machine right here to date as far as I know I'm the last shiftly Master digitizer still alive and teaching and in the embroidery industry in my close to 40 years as a digitizer I've worked with dozens of Fortune 500 companies such as Disney Coca-Cola and ironically enough even John Deere I've won 30 Awards commercially and taught tens of thousands of embroiderers how to digitize and create custom embroidery designs now before we dive into the course I need to make one thing very clear so pay attention digitizing is an art form which in today's world incorporates two key elements one is a software program with the tools you need to create embroidery designs the second is something that was formulated over a century ago the theory for creating designs which has nothing to do with the software you see thread fabrics and needles still interact in the same way today as they did over a hundred years ago I was blessed to learn the art of punching or digitizing as it's now known before computers took over the world the theory I learned from my shiffley mentors is the foundation I now share with others and some of the basics I'm about to share with you the only difference is I now incorporate that theory with today's modern software programs there's two pieces of this puzzle software on the one hand and theory on the other you put the two together and you'll learn how to easily create beautiful embroidery designs please keep in mind that I strongly believe that every person who owns an embroidering machine digitizer or not should know what I'm about to teach you to achieve professional embroidered results even if you have no intention to ever digitize knowing the theory behind behind it will make you a better embroiderer with it you'll understand what's really happening underneath your needle and how to avoid common problems this 101 course will cover the following topics what is digitizing basic rules for the three main Stitch types what is density understanding underlay understanding Distortion what is proper registration what is pathing or mapping and finally what is fabric assist now before we get started and to ensure you get the most out of this course be sure you have the printable PDF cheat sheet in front of you to follow along and take notes it's a great resource to keep beside your embroidery machine and to turn to afterwards as well you can download it for free on our website after you've enrolled in this course so if you're watching this on YouTube and haven't already done so be sure to follow the link below to enroll on our site and download the PDF cheat sheet now also don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel below and comment the date that you're watching watching this course to show your commitment and mark the start of your embroidery digitizing Journey once you've done this course you'll have a solid understanding of the basic digitizing fundamentals so let's get started so what is digitizing quite simply put digitizing is the process in which you use your software and the tools within that software to create an embroidery design that runs on a machine the trick is to actually make the design so that its production friendly so it doesn't have unnecessary jumps and trims as well as ensuring that the machine actually runs smoothly promoting soft embroidery is your key you do not want to have Stitch intensive designs that cause thread brakes bird's nests and disastrous results now with regards to the basic rules for the three main Stitch types the first one we're going to cover is the running Stitch and the running Stitch really is the foundational Stitch that you work with it's the most simple but it's also the one that gives you the most creativity I use the running Stitch whenever I'm doing a lot of fine detail and embroidery designs or I'm trying to create things that look realistic now with a running Stitch there really is only one main thing that you can control and that is the Stitch length the space between the penetrations of the needle going in and out of the fabric now here it's very important that you understand that there is a minimum and a maximum and the actual minimum Stitch length I would ever want to create on an embroidery machine is5 mm if you go under 0.5 mm the machine essentially thinks that it's sewing in the same place over and over again and it will promote Stitch intensive designs as well as designs that actually will cause thread breaks now I can move up from there to 1 mm and 1 mm is kind of the safe Zone is kind of if I have 0.5 as the Red Zone I go to 1 mm as the orange Zone and if I go to 1 point5 it's actually the green zone so as I'm digitizing designs I try to ensure that most of my Stitch penetrations are at least a millimeter and a half apart from each other which promotes smooth running androider designs that will not become Stitch intensive now that we've covered the minimum let's talk about the maximum Stitch length you'd ever want to use for a running Stitch and to be honest there's two different answers it depends on whether it's on a wearable item or whether it's going to be on a non wearable item if you have an embroidery design on a wearable item you do not want the Stitch lengths to get too long because after you launder that item you'll find that the stitches could Loop or if it is on a jacket and you lean up against a brick wall you'll actually have those stitches snag so if I'm doing embroidery on a wearable item I always try to stay between 5 to 7 mm in Stitch length if it's a non-wearable item something that I'm going to hang on a wall I can go anywhere from 7 to 12.1 mm now just remember you can't go over 12.1 because most machines today have trimmers and the trimmers will automatically trim if they get over 12.1 mm and you'll create something called invisible embroidery now with regards to the basic rules of a satin Stitch it's kind of similar to a run Stitch you want to watch and see that you don't overstep the rules of how long the Stitch becomes I wouldn't want to really try to do a half mm satin cuz be for sure it's going to sink into the fabric and disappear so I always like to have at least a millimeter of space between the stitches going back and forth now on some Fabrics that will still disappear like if you're embroidering on terry cloth or Ser of fleece so about 1 . 5 mm is usually within the safety zone and you can again go up to 5 to 7 mm for a wearable item and 7 to 12.1 for a non-wearable the only other thing you can control within a satin Stitch is the direction of the Stitch that it's actually creating as well as the spacing between each Stitch and that's what's actually called density and that is meant to be changed based on the width of the Stitch as well as which fabric type you might be putting it on now with regards to a fill Stitch the rules fundamentally change as opposed to the running and the satin with regards to the Stitch length you never want to have a really short Stitch length within a fill because fills are meant to cover large areas if you have too many short stitches you'll actually run the embroidery launder it and when it comes out of the laundry machine you're going to see that your fill is doing a little bit of a waffling it's going to actually look like a roller coaster and that's because there's just too many Stitch penetrations in a small area so I never like to see under a 4mm stitch when I'm actually digitizing fills you can also control the random effect of the fill so you can have a smooth looking fill or a fill that looks a little bit more textured and you can also create pattern fills and a lot of these are preset in almost every software program within the industry so what exactly is density now we did touch on it when we were going over the three stitch types density is basically the space between each Stitch and that does vary depending on a few factors now the normal density that you'll find in most software programs is actually 4 mm of space which is just a little bit larger than the width of a thread so it looks like you have full coverage on a garment but sometimes you might need more density or less density in a design and that really depends on the fabric type if you're actually sewing on vinyl or leather you'll need less density in a design because too many penetrations will literally cut out the leather or the vinyl if you have something like Serpa fleece or terry cloth it will actually need more density because there's such a high pile you need to add a little bit more coverage to the actual fabric now the other key factor is density is meant to be changed and this is one of the main reason why there are so many what I like to call bulletproof designs Stitch intensive designs that are available in the industry because a lot of people when they're learning how to digitize have that default4 mm density and they digitize everything layer upon layer of stitches goes on top of each other all with the same density if you put a full coverage density on a full coverage density on top of a full coverage what you're going to have is a bulletproof design as you build up the layers within your embroidery and you start stacking thread on top of each other you should be reducing the density of every layer that you're putting on top understanding underlay is one of the most important things to know as a digitizer because underlay is one of those things that you don't see but it plays one of the most important parts of laying a foundation within an embroidery design now there's many different types of underlay you can have Center run underlay Edge run underlay lay zigzag double zigzag zigzags with Edge runs you can have combinations of underlay that are all interacting together and they do all serve a purpose within a satin Stitch you might need a center run if the satin Stitch is actually really thin as that satin Stitch gets wider you need to add maybe a zigzag and if it gets wider you need an edge run the whole idea behind underlay is it acts as a break wall it helps you to keep your stitches looking clean the stitches that you visually see and it gives you a foundation to lay everything on top of and then you have underlay for fill stitches which need to run a pose to the direction of the fill because you need to have a base for that fill to to sit on so that you don't actually get Distortion within a design now understanding Distortion can be one of the most difficult things for a new digitizer to figure out what happens is they see their design on screen and it looks absolutely perfect and then they sew it on their machine and they see that is completely changed and you have to remember the main reason why is an embroidery machine works under the principles of tension you have a top thread that is actually pulling tension and you have a bobin that's pulling tension as well and that's how we create a flat Stitch the tension pulls and it creates a flat Stitch so if you look at my fingers the direction of my fingers which are horizontal and you look at that thread that's pulling it actually has something called pull compensation The Wider the Stitch the more it pulls in and the pull compensation is something that's actually built into the software program and you can adjust the amount of pull compensation within a design based on the width of the Stitch as well as the fabric type now there's one other culprit this one is not necessarily built into the software it's something that's called push and push happens on the open ends of an embroidery design now the easiest way I found it to explain this is I have a tube of toothpaste and the toothpaste has an open end the open end is where the toothpaste comes out and when that Stitch goes back and forth it's kind of like me squeezing the toothpaste a little bit of toothpaste starts to come out of the open end and that's exactly what happens with embroidery on those open ends the top and the bottom of a letter ey it pulls in One Direction and it pulls out it pushes out on the top and bottom and distorts the design now as you get a handle on this it does become easier to control because you understand the theory or the principles now this is a perfect example of distortion or what is really incorrect registration as you can see the first example here has all kinds of areas where the black running Stitch is not lining up to the satin and fill areas and this is an example of perfect registration where everything is lining up perfectly now as I said that happens when we are talking about not using underlay but most importantly it is really what happens when you don't path or map your designs properly a design should be thought out it's kind of funny but I've seen many times designs when they run out on the machine and I watch them so they don't really make sense they're jumping over here and over there and back and forth and there's no real thought put into the designs and I know you can all relate to what I'm saying that's a design that was not pathed properly when a digitizer knows what they're doing they know to look at an object like we'd have here as a floor plan and they can see how if they're going to do something like vacuum a house they will logically go from room to room and they'll work their way from one end of the room to the doorway and then go to the next room and do it in a logical order you don't go in and start you know vacuuming the the first room in your house and then go to the back of your house and then go to the center of your house you're always looking at the start and stop point of doing any task and it's the exact same principles when it comes to digitizing you want to look at your objects your designs and you want to start and stop and figure out the best way so that you can get to the next object that you want to create now we're going to discuss color changes and trends now I'll be honest if a digitizer knows what they're doing sometimes there will be extra color changes in a design and those extra color changes are meant to be there to promote good registration it kind of is not getting too far ahead of yourself but you're finishing areas as you move forward so I don't always think that extra color changes in a design are a negative thing if the digitizer knows what they're doing but trims that's a completely other subject I unnecessary trims are one of the worst culprits in embroidery and if you have a design that has a 100 unnecessary trims you have to remember that that is loss running time on your machine when your machine actually has to do a trim it needs to slow down it stops it activates the trimmers it cuts it moves over it ties in at slow speed and then it ramps up to actually continue to sew and if you were to time how many stitches you actually lost it's about 120 stitches on average that means if you have 100 unnecessary trims in a design that's like 12,000 stitches of lost production time so trims do matter and that's why digitizing is all about taking all of these rules learning them learning the theory putting them together and creating designs that sew out on your machine that are soft that actually have good pathing on them use the right density the right underlay and because they're path properly have minimal trims and they will run effectively on your machines so what exactly is fabric assist well I'll be honest I've saved the best H last but it is a little bit of a teaser you see it's impossible for me to expect a home embroider or even a commercial embroider to know all of the variables and properties for all of the different fabric types that are in existence now wilcom has had a tool that's been around for over 20 years called fabric assist it's actually written within their native EMB file format and if you want to change all the properties at the click of a button from let's say tie silk to stretchy terry cloth all you have to do is press that button and it'll automatically change all of the properties to run better on that fabric type it's a huge advantage and it's something that I've been using for over 20 years especially when I had a factory running with over1 130 6 multi heads I hope you can now see why understanding digitizing theory is so important if you want to create your own custom embroidery designs and honestly for just getting solid embroidery results in general using embroidery software without understanding theory is like owning a calculator without understanding math unless you have some basic math Theory you won't be able to properly use it this is where I see virtually every other source of digitizing education on YouTube physical stores or even other online courses fall short they teach the house of the software like where the buttons or tools are but not why you'd actually use them thankfully this is where our education stands apart and why we named our website digitizing easy.com to begin with if you'd like to continue learning how to easily create your own embroidery designs to perfectly accent any project and join the embroidery Elite as a digitizer I highly suggest you do one of two things first if you already own embroidery software and like it then check out our Fan Favorite digitizers Dream course by clicking the link below taught in 11 of the industry's leading software Brands our Dream course combines both theory-based lectures and Hands-On lessons that have you apply what you've learned by actually digitizing designs in your own software with specifically formulated artwork that we provide why because it's a science-backed fact that when learning seeing and doing produces the fastest results and ensures they stick the best part is that your lessons will never expire and we have proven results with thousands of students worldwide in fact we're so confident that we can get you creating and editing your own custom embroidery designs that we even offer a no questions asked 14-day money back guarantee now if you don't own embroidery digitizing software or just don't like the one you're currently using do yourself a favor and download the free trial of our favorite industry-leading software using the link below if you've enjoyed this 101 course don't forget to give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our YouTube channel we've always said that any software program is only as good as the education provided so whether you want to be able to create a one-of-a-kind embroidery design that means something special to you or a loved one make some extra money with embroidery or simply take your embroidery to the next level be sure to click one of the two links below to either check out our digitizers Dream course or download a free digitizing software trial through us thanks for joining me and remember the next step of your embroider Legacy starts here with ours [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music]