April 2010 Letter from Lindee

Free video reveals #1 secret to perfect embroidery

No Comments April 12th, 2010 In News

By Lindee Goodall

April 2010 Letter from Lindee

I can’t believe how fast April is whizzing by! As usual, I’ve had my nose so close to the grindstone that I’ve barely come up for air. And although winter is past us for the most part, I’m still in a flurry of activity. So let me catch you up!

Unit 3 – Learn to Digitize: Graphics, Color, and File Formats

I just wrapped the third in an 8-volume series in learning to digitize. I keep telling myself I have to make them smaller. This one is 210 pages supplemented by 9 videos for a total of 1 hour and 45 minutes of viewing time. This is the course I wanted when I was learning to digitize!

In this unit you’ll learn about graphic format, which to use when, and quite a bit about graphics design. You don’t need a degree in art to be an embroidery digitizer but understanding some principles of design and color can go a long way towards making a great looking design. How many times have you been attracted (or turned off) by aomething just because of its color?

In this unit you’ll learn about importing and exporting and the value of native file formats, creating hoops and when and why you might want to move the design origin, working with color through the use of thread libraries, creating custom thread libraries and hoops. Of course, the main focus is artwork and truly the heart of any design is the art, so we’ll find out what to look for in art for embroidery and how to clean it it up. We’ll also hook up a scanner and discuss scanning options.

Two New Collections

To reward myself for finishing up Unit 3. I took some “time off” and digitized some summer designs at the request of my friend Leanne Church. Beachin’ It and Summer Fun are available as Building Blocks or as a multi-format collection. Two more collections will be following these to add to the summer theme.

Because You Asked

OK, so I went crazy making Building Blocks. What can I say? They’re just too fun. I’ve always liked designs that offered me more creative opportunities and these are usually smaller, simpler elements that I can combine and recombine for endless variety. I’d rather have Legos than the finished Lego creation.
Now I’ve converted the Building Block designs for other formats.

Of course, you’ll miss out on some of the flexibility of the native Generations version but with a good program, you’ll be able to resize, mirror, and rotate them to create your own designs too.
Of course, if you want the flexibility of a true native file format, that will only happen if you have Generations. If you’d like to try out Generations at an insanely low price, check out the Test Drive Generations Offer.

Leanne Church has a great project using the summer building blocks and she’ll be showing you how during the Spring Tour. Her instructions will be part of your goodie bag. Maybe I can get her to let me post them here after the event.

Spring Tour!

I had so much fun doing the California tour last November, I agreed to do it one more time. This time we’re hitting the eastern part of the U.S. The Embroidery Made Easy live events are designed to demystify embroidery and make it fun and easy. It’s also a great place to connect with other embroiderers in your area. You can read all the details here.

Free Webinars to Continue

Since last December, I’ve been hosting free weekly digitizing webinars with James Lyman at embroidery.com. After this week, we will be moving to a once a month webinar. These webinars are quite time consuming most weeks and it is holding up the production of the learn to digitize series, not to mention I don’t get paid for doing free webinars. I’m falling behind on my initial schedule and I’ll soon be taking two weeks out to do the Spring Tour. The webinars will continue to be free and are tentatively planned for the second Thursday of each month at the 7pm MDT period. You can see a list of previous webinar topics.

Online Shop Expanded

OK, so now that I’ve figured out how to work with the shopping cart system, I’ve expanded it to include all of my designs. You can now download full design collections. There are also now two categories under designs: Generations and Multi-format. If you have Generations and you want native format designs, which at this point includes just the 8 building block collections, then shop here.

If you want to see the standard collections (French Curve Connection and Gingery Christmas) or the converted building block designs for non-Generations owners, shop here. When you purchase a collection, you will get all the formats in one big zip file. The shopping cart considers each download to be a separate product so rather than to make a product for each format (which would mean you’d have to selecte the right one), I grouped them into one big file. Note that I cannot make the ART format because I don’t have the Bernina software. Color sequence information is included.

Until I have the time to design a custom shop rather than using an off-the-shelf one, individual design purchases cannnot be made.

Spring Stock Up Sale!

So for those of you who managed to read all the way to the bottom of the newsletter, here’s a reward. From now until May 2, you can take 25% off any purchase in the shop except the Tension Minder. You can use this coupon multiple times and you can share the coupon code with your friends. So what do you need to do?

Click on “shop” in the menu bar at the top of the page, and when you’re ready to check out, enter your coupon code: lge0410.

The Fine Print

This code is valid for anyone who uses it from now until May 2. If you forget to apply the code, you won’t get the discount. If you buy something and then find out about the code, it is not retroactive. The code is only good on purchases made through the shopping cart at Lindee G Embroidery, not on phone orders or event orders. It cannot be combined with other discounts. You can apply it to all downloadable products and to products in the cart that must be shipped (Spring Tension Gauge and Learn to Digitize units). Shipping charges will still be applied. If you want normally downloadable products to be shipped to you, the coupon cannot be applied.

New Free Designs

As part of the webinar series, I issued an egg decorating challenge. I was truly impressed with the submissions. You can download the egg design I made here. Also, a few weeks ago I posted a free Building Block mini collection. I’ve now converted those to multi-format and you can get the multi-format designs here.

Test Drive Event

Have you ever had a great idea for a project, had just the design in mind for the perfect result, but then you couldn’t find a design that worked? These days it’s easy to create your own design whenever you want. Digitizing software has progressed so much since I first started! Today I can’t imagine doing the work I used to do to create a single design. And had I not had a background in computer programming and graphics, I probably would never have founded Cactus Punch.

Today programs are available that do the hard stuff for you. Kind of like having a builder create your dream home and then you do the final decorating.

If you’ve ever thought about making your own designs but didn’t know where to start, there’s a Test Drive Event just starting. You can trial the Generations Plus embroidery digitizing software until June 1, 2010. That’s a full version of the software plus training! Read more about the Generations Test Drive Event.

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