What Are Building Blocks?

Building Blocks are to embroiderers as dingbat fonts are to desktop publishers; they are small elements that can be combined to create other more complex designs, or combined with each other, or just used stand-alone to fill in or embellish a small area.

What is Customizing?

Customizing is a term used for embroidery utility programs that provide a canvas for combining multiple designs and/or performing basic functions such as mirror (flip), rotate, distort, and resize. Additionally, these programs may provide a lettering component for adding text or monograms to your designs and features like eliminating bulk  of overlapping stitches and color-sorting.

Think of it this way: If you use a desktop publishing program to produce newsletter or article, the elements—text, graphics, charts—are usually created in other programs and simply combined in the publishing program. Elements may be resized, rotated, fonts changed, etc. Customizing programs work similarly; they are not meant to create new elements from scratch or edit individual stitches.

Although I usually only work with my own designs (ones I digitized), my digitizing software is not designed for customizing and it is quite difficult to manipulate complete designs because they cannot be grouped into one object. Because of this, I prefer to use a program designed for customizing for this purpose and my choice is Embrilliance Essentials.

Why Embrilliance Essentials

One very big reason is that it works on Mac (without Parallels!), which is my platform of choice. And, for you Windows people, it works there as well.

Of course there are other key reasons:

• Ease of use
• Features
• Price

Size Matters

Sometimes when I’m creating a design layout, it is way too large to be sewn on any machine. These bonnet designs are too long for my home machines. For the pink and white bonnet, I split the designs into two segments to sew on my Baby Lock in two hoping. The green and white bonnet was embroidered on my commercial machine as one piece. Each method has it’s pros and cons.

Some programs will only let you save designs that will fit the machine’s sewing field or the selected hoop, which can be a real hindrance to creativity. I would really like to create the entire design in one file and then when I’m satisfied, split it into multiple hoopings. I think you can easily see why it would be easier to work that way.

Play Time

Customizing time is play time to me. Sometimes when I just want to have some fun, I just sit and play with various design combinations. Other times I may see a design on a garment in a photo and see how I can build something similar from designs in my stash.

Often though, I don’t have the entire finished design visualized. I usually know the area I want to fill and I know the type of look I’m going for. Therefore, I usually trial many elements, adding and deleting and saving multiple versions. I’m not worried about sewing order at this time. Once I get a composition I like, then I manually resequence it by moving the elements, which is in the Objects Pane, in Embrilliance.

If your software won’t let you do that or it isn’t easy to do, you can cut and repaste each element in the order you want. This works especially well in a program that will paste into the same spot  you just cut from. (Placement is the same position on the screen but the object order has just changed.) I use this technique more in Generations.

Tips for Single Color Designs

The green and white bonnet uses several designs that are different colors. Since I knew I wanted to sew this in one color, I worked with the DST versions of the files. Each element was a single color design but the design colors varied. DST won’t hold color information so each element came in as the same color, in this case, black. Remember, you can sew the design in any color you like!

Color Sorting

I personally have major issues with color sorting, especially when combining multiple multi-colored designs that share a color palette AND any of those designs have outlines.

If you don’t know what color sorting is, it reduces the number of colors in a design by intelligently (according to software, not to digitizer!) combining color repeats. In other words, it will keep any colors properly layered but it doesn’t consider pathing or registration issues. While this sounds like a good thing, it can totally destroy the integrity of your design. I cover the issues with color sorting in my ebook, The Anatomy of a Design: How to Think Like a Digitizer & Become a Better Embroiderer.

The good news with Essentials is that color sorting is saved to another file, not your working file. Always test your color sorted (or any design for that matter!). If it doesn’t sew optimally, go back to your original.

Do You Have Generations?

The entire Building Block series was digitized in Generations auto-digitizing software and are available in the MNG format. This means you have full control over each design to change stitch types and pathing. Because you have control over stitch types, you have more resizing ability and more design opportunities.

How to Make the Bonnets

You can download the free pattern for the bonnets from the shopping cart here. If you have never downloaded from the cart before, you will need to set up an account first. You will still go through the check out process but the pattern is free.

You won’t find a lot of instructions for the bonnet and that’s because it is so simple! There are no step-by-step instructions (hey, it’s free!) but if you’ve done even basic sewing and garment construction, you’ll be fine. I did not interface the bonnet. Just two small pieces of fabric (fat quarters are sufficient), a yard or two of ribbon, and a short bit of elastic. The pink and white bonnet has elastic stitched into the casing, the green bonnet used ribbon laced through the casing. The bonnet ties are just hand stitched in place.

The pattern will show the design area. Keep in mind that the embroidery is actually on the lining piece, which is then folded back for the “brim,” as you can see on the green bonnet.

Tip: If you know how to do it, use the design placement guides to create a work area in your software. I imported this part into my digitizing software, duplicated and mirrored it to make a whole image then used it to create a basting outline. Most machines will not have a large enough sewing field for this. Even if yours doesn’t you’ll still be able to plan your design and then split it up as required.

Designs used on Bonnets

Below you can see screen captures of the designs I composed for the two bonnets shown here using designs from Leaves 1, Delicate Roses, and Elegant Scrolls.

Tip: Build one side, then copy, paste and mirror. The center motif runs last.

Once you’ve got your design ready, embroider it. For this infant sized bonnet, you can sew an edge to edge design in 3 hoopings: two 5×7″ hoopings plus one small center medallion or two with a larger sewing field. I heavily starched and pressed the fabric (cotton in both samples) before embroidering. Embroider the bonnet before assembling.

This basic bonnet can be embellished in so many ways—truly only your imagination will limit you!

Other Uses for These Designs

I’m sure you can easily envision using these same combinations beyond baby bonnets and in colors other than the ones shown. Adding a few strategically placed hot fix crystals can really glam them up!

Where are the Designs?

You won’t find the completed designs used for these items (at least not at this writing). The reason is that because I combined several already finished designs, the pathing in these designs is not optimal for production. That’s one of the trade-offs with working with ready-made designs. It’s vastly easier to create a new composition than drawing and digitizing the finished combination from scratch but since during the digitizing process there’s no way to predict how they will be combined, they will tend to have a few more jumps and trims.

I encourage you to play around with these kinds of designs. You’ll have a lot more fun with your design stash and you’ll have projects no one else has.

Where to Get the Pattern

Download the pattern here. Please note that while this pattern is free of charge, you are not free to share the actual pattern. Please do share the link so that your friends can come get their own.

Learn more about Generations & Building blocks at LearnGenerations.

A touch of delicate romance is a delight year round, not just for Valentine’s Day! Consider other holidays—Mother’s Day, Sweetest Day, birthdays—or just a special token to say “I’m thinking of you.

You’ll notice the top has a small inner heart, perfect for customizing with another small design or a monogram. The bottom is more plain to reduce sewing time and provide a place for an additional message.

To make lining the box simple, I created 2 appliqués sized to fit into the lid and base and embroidered them as free-standing appliqué (technique is covered in the included instructions.). Lining is optional.

This small ring or trinket box is designed so that it may be sewn in a 4×4” or 100x100mm hoop. If you have a 5×7 hoop, you’ll find a longer side piece that can be used instead of piecing two smaller segments together for each side.

Make it into a Sachet…

I really prefer to make designs that offer a little more flexibility for personal creativity and this often requires extra planning before ever even drawing.

For this one, I designed it so the box lid can double as a sachet. Simply embroider two and lace them together. A pattern is included for the potpourri bag, which can be done either in the hoop or the more traditional method.

You’ll find that if you rinse all the stabilizer out of this lace, it is incredibly soft. It would also work well as an applique on other projects.

Want a more tailored looking sachet? Embroider two bottom pieces and lace up in a similar manner.

I have to say my house smells pretty good right now after making a sachet and filling it with Lily of the Valley potpourri!

Customize it!

I’ve designed a small area on the lid for your customizing. You can add a small 1 or 2 letter monogram or small design here, like the white lid on the right. I’ve included one of the rosebuds from Delicate Roses so you’ll have one to play with. I did rotate it after placing it (I used Embrilliance Essentials for this—if you’re a Mac user like me and don’t like to “do Windows,” then you’ll want to check out this program! There’s also a Windows version.)

Advanced Customizing (AKA Editing)

With editing software, you can customize the lid piece even more by adding in a few extra color changes! I strategically digitized the lid to make this an easy task. (A lot of goes in to planning versatile embroideries!) This design is digitized from the middle out so you can easily have the inner most heart as one color (the image below has it in 2), the swirls as another, and the scalloped outer edge a third. Be sure to add in tie stitches if your editing software doesn’t do it automatically for you!

I truly think that if you learn some basic editing skills, you can really maximize your embroidery creativity!

Make Your Own Lace!

There’s even more blank area on the bottom piece of the box. If you’ve ever wanted to make your own lace designs, here’s the perfect little blank palette! The bottom piece is also designed to lace together so it too can be used as a less fussy sachet. Both the top and the bottom can be left flat and used as ornaments or embellishments for scrapbooking.

Free-Standing Applique

In the photo here, the white heart on the left is laced with red ribbon and lined top and bottom with red satin free-standing appliqués. Here’s yet another place for customizing. Sew up a batch of these customized with a name (guests, or maybe the names of the bride and groom and their special day) and sprinkle on a table for a bridal shower. The sachets would make wonderful special mementos as well.

Instructions on how to do free-standing appliqué are included in the PDF and I’ll bet you’ll find a lot of ways to use this technique and not just with these designs. For example, this is the perfect technique for the Badges collection. If you have software that creates appliques from basic shapes, you can make your own with this same process.

An extra tip: If you know your way around editing software, extract that first color (the placement guide) and copy and paste into a new file. Use it as a guide to embellish with other designs or add lettering. Sew it out, cut it out, and use it as an appliqué. Do be sure to check that the design has not “shrunken up” due to any sewing distortions. You may want to remove the outline guide before sewing so that you can cut a more accurate applique pattern.

This free-standing lace heart box project collection includes 8 design files plus a fully illustrated 16-page instructional booklet (included with lgp002-colors.zip) and full-size printable templates. The 16-page, full-color, fully illustrated PDF instructions cover basic lace embroidery tips, how to assemble the heart box, how to make and assemble the sachet, and how to make double-sided free-standing finished applique designs.

I normally include all the pertinent documentation for a collection in the “colors.zip” file to keep the downloads as efficient at possible. If you download 2 formats, you won’t be duplicating a potentially large set of documentation files.

While we typically think of hearts at Valentine’s Day, consider all the other “love” occasions: Mother’s Day, weddings, engagements, Sweetest Day, birthdays, and “I love you just because” days. This versatile little collection can provide a variety of special presents by feeding your “gift stash” and justifying that amazing machine you have!

Get Started Making Your Own!

This project collection includes:

• 8 hand-drawn and manually digitized machine embroidery designs (4 as free-standing lace) One fancy scalloped bordered free-standing lace heart for the lid or sachet
• One slightly smaller more basic free-standing lace heart intended for the bottom
• One pair of sides for 5×7 inch sewing field
• One pair of split sides for 4×4 inch sewing fields
• One applique heart sized for the lid insert/lining
• One applique heart sized for the box insert/lining
• One in-the-hoop sachet bag lining design
• One small rosebud for optional embellishing on the lid

• One 16-page fully illustrated step-by-step color instruction book (PDF)

I’m sure once you download and start making these little hearts, you’ll start thinking of all kinds of clever ways to use them! And as you do, please share them on my Facebook page! If you post pictures of your projects, feel free to tag Lindee G Embroidery so they show up on my page and others can see them as well.

Or, you can get just the lace heart used in the lid or the sachet.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of my first heirloom angel, created for an office Christmas party contest. At the time I still worked full time for an ad agency in Cincinnati (as well as full-time building the then fledgling Cactus Punch). There were several categories for the tree ornament contest, and knowing my co-workers, I knew I could never top them in the orneriest category so I decided to shoot for prettiest–and I won. The other party-goers were astounded when I said I made her and explained how. My boss, Mike, wasn’t surprised—he’d seen some of the things I created.

Best Original Embroidery Design Award

A few months later, I entered the angel again at METS, an embroidery trade show in Chicago and I won first place for best original digitized design. (Hey, it was 1997!) I never really intended her as a stock design, she was just something I made for the party. Here’s a picture of her–some of you may have sewn this design yourself.

The photo above shows her from the back. She’s sewn on nylon organza, cut out, and then the remaining fabric is melted with a soldering iron. Even after embroidering, she still requires  45 or more minutes of hand work to complete. Back then, she was was sewn in a multi-position hoop–what fun that was!

I can’t believe it’s been 15 years since I first digitized her and for the past few months I’ve been thinking about how I would design a new one. I’ve been making sketches and collecting images to inspire me. I knew I wanted her to be very special, something unique, something you won’t find an identical version of on someone else’s site. In fact, right now she’s exclusive to only Lindee G Embroidery.

It’s been a rough few years for many of us. Some have faced health issues,  others have lost loved ones, jobs, and businesses. It’s been rough for many of us in the embroidery business as well as we’ve seen the price of design plummet and the number of people buying them drop off as well. I wanted to create a special design that would inspire faith and hope.

Christmas 2011 Heirloom Angel

So here she is! She stands about 8.5″ tall and, if you have a large sewing field (200x300mm), you can sew her in two hoopings. I’ve also created split versions for 5×7″ (130x180mm) sewing fields. If you have a smaller machine, I suggest you upgrade!

As shown here, she is totally free standing and self supporting and requires only a few hand stitches to secure—far less hand work than my original version from 1996! She does have a few more stitches, weighing in at over 200,000 stitches to complete. Based on that,  you could expect to pay over $200 for her based on a typical $1/1000 stitches embroidery rate and that doesn’t include a set-up fee or special handling for finishing.

You’ll notice, too, that she doesn’t look like a lot of the free-standing lace proliferating the internet these days. You know the ones I mean—a mesh grid of fill stitches with some satin elements sprinkled on and a few voids here and there.This one is designed to look more like hand-punched lace and there are no “instant effects” on her.

The version shown can be disassembled in seconds to store or ship flat—well, pretty flat except for the flared skirt. Assembled, she’ll preside elegantly on your holiday buffet or fireplace mantle or  even grace the top of your Christmas tree.

While she does take quite a while to sew, she has no jumps, no trims, and no color changes so once you press the start button on your machine, you can let it run ’til it’s done, even on a single needle model. Smaller machines will require 8 hoopings and I’ve given those of you with those machines two options for the skirt: one is easier to sew but a little more time consuming to assemble (not hand stitching) while the other one requires attaching panels as you embroider.

The download includes embroidery files, color sequence PDF, and an illustrated instructional PDF.

I Must Be Insane!

If you think this angel takes a long time to sew, imagine how long it took to draw, engineer, digitize and test. The angel you see here is the third one I made, so yes, I do know how long it takes to sew! I also have a recycle bin full of paper mock-ups and throw-away designs. What makes me insane is that from now until next year (January 1, 2012) I’m giving this collection away for only $5!

Get Her Before the Stroke of the New Year!

Obviously I can’t sell her at this price forever so I suggest you get her soon. She’d make an elegant Christmas gift for someone special on your list. All she really takes is thread and some wash-away stabilizer. Sure she takes time to sew but that’s machine time not your time. Your time is just hooping, rinsing out the stabilizer and a small amount of time to assemble.

In this video, I just have a little fun creating a simple design just using the built in fonts. You’ll see how easy it is to select font styles, see how they look, and resize, mirror and rotate them.

Why Embrilliance?

I’ve been mentioning Embrilliance Essentials, which was released at Christmas, and Convert It Mac, which was released in 2008, for quite a while. For one thing, as a long-time Mac user, I prefer to work and design in OSX not in Windows and until recently, we Mac users haven’t had much of choice.

Embrilliance Essentials is a feature packed program with the essentials most embroiderers demand AND when you purchase it, you can run it on any of your Windows machines plus your Mac. What other programs let you do that? Usually, you must make a choice.

Notice that I said “essentials most embroiderers demand.” This is not a complicated digitizing or editing program. It is more like a customizing program with built-in lettering and some interactive designs.

Features

So what are the “essentials” in Embrilliance Essentials? Using your Mac or Windows PC you can:

• Merge embroidery designs in almost any format, even while they are in .ZIPs.
• Resize, with stitch recalculation.
• Colorize.
• Convert Thread Brands on your designs.
• Add lettering in Multi-Line, Monogram and Circle modes. You can even spiral text or make really LARGE letters.
• Save in your machine’s format.
• Save working files so that you can edit text later.
• Overlap designs and have significant understitching removed.
• Run a simulator to show how your designs will sew out.
• Group/ Ungroup
• Change or remove individual colors in a design.
• Color sort a design.
• Have many chances to Undo your work.
• There are special, self-modifying designs that can be used, and some come with the program. These designs calculate their stitches as you play with them for super results!
• Intel Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) and later (including Lion)
• Windows XP 32-bit, Windows Vista 32/64, Windows 7 32/64
• Embrilliance is the only brand in the World that offers embroidery software running  native on Mac and Windows 32 and Windows 64 (so it’s faster)!

What Makes Embrilliance Essentials Different?

If you look at the features list, you’ll see that there are other similar programs on the market that seemingly perform the same tasks. One may have been included by your machine vendor. So why would you want or need another? Because Essentials is easier, cleaner, and makes sense.

What I like about Essentials is that it’s simple and intuitive. You don’t have to go into this screen to do this thing and that to do something else. In techy terms, it’s non-modal. You can add text and edit it. Don’t like the size? Change it! Don’t like the font? Pick a new one. Misspelled something? You can correct it. Want to apply a shape? Pick one and play with it until you like it. When I say “change it,” I mean you are modifying the original text not creating a new version of it.

To put this into perspective, if you have 5D Extra, a highly modal program, you can’t modify a text block. You have to create a new one. And then when you’re done, you have to combine it even if it’s the only thing on the screen. No wonder that program never made any sense to me. Extra won’t let you save anything bigger than your hoop but Essentials does. This means I can create a big layout and save it and then break it into manageable chunks for the target hoop. And Essentials costs *way* less than Extra.

See Embrilliance Essentials in Action

Of course, everyone says great things about their software. You can get a much better feel for a program by watching a demo.

I’ve created some YouTube videos where you can watch me perform common tasks in the program. I’ll be adding more over time so check my YouTube channel for the latest.

Resizing

One of the most common changes done to a design is resizing it. This is seldom difficult with designs you create within a program but is more challenging when working with stitch files. See how Embrilliance Essentials excels at this task.

Designing with Interactives in Embrilliance Essentials

Interactive designs are a special design type and the program comes with 10 pre-installed. These designs are “native” files and Essentials can scale and reshape them with a greater degree of flexibility than stitch files. Satin stitches are automatically converted to a special fill type when their length exceeds a certain value. More interactives are planned!

To get the 30% off, you need to use this coupon code: lge0410

This sale was originally sent out to VIP members and it expired on June 30. However, I ran the sale during the week and I heard from many disappointed members who save reading email for the weekend and they had entirely missed the sale. Therefore, I’m extending the sale through the holiday weekend (Independence Day here in the US).

Also, previously the sale was only announced in the newsletter and on Facebook.This is the first time I’ve posted information on the website.

Visit the shop here…

To get the 30% off, you need to use this coupon code: lge0410

Do not try to combine this coupon with any other coupons, such as the one for the candlewick medallions.

Save $119 on the Learn to Digitize Course!

This sale is shop wide and even includes the course!

If you’ve been wanting to learn how to digitize and you have Generations or are thinking about buying it, this is truly the best course on the planet! Eight units guide you step-by-step to creating designs within minutes. You’ll start with auto-digitizing and then learn how to quickly modify it for your own tastes. Each unit builds on the skills learned in the previous. By the end of the course, you’ll have the skills and knowledge to become a true master digitizer!

Course includes

• 12+ hours of videos
• Nearly 1500 pages in e-books
• Structured exercises
• Any necessary files
• Bundle includes Anatomy of a Design.

Purchased individually the course would cost $480. Add on Anatomy of a design and the value is nearly $520. With this sale, you can get it all for only $279.97! Plus shipping is free to most countries!

• Read all about the course here: http://LearnGenerations.com
• Order the course here
• Complete your current units here

To get the 30% off, you need to use this coupon code: lge0410

Other Savings

Anatomy of a Design: How to Think Like a Digitizer and Become a Better Digitizer.

This is undoubtedly our best selling product! If you are a reasonably experienced embroiderer—you’ve mastered the basics of hooping, stabilizing, etc—then the next major piece that will take your embroidery to a more professional result is understanding how designs are composed.

If you don’t yet have this e-book, now’s a great time to get it! Regularly $37 now $25.90. This book is not software specific and gives you an insight into what digitizers consider when creating a design and how the various design attributes affect your use—fabric type, threads, stabilizers, resizing.

• Get Anatomy of a Design here.
• Learn more here…

To get the 30% off, you need to use this coupon code: lge0410

Design Collections

• Building Blocks, which includes designs in Generations format as well as standard machine formats are reduced from $39.95 to $27.96. Each collection includes 20 designs bringing the price per design to $1.40
• Premium collections, which also include guest artists, are reduced from $59.95 to $41.96. This group includes the Hardanger collection (which includes Generations format) that was featured in recent issue of CME.
• The so-called Standard group, which is regularly priced at $39.95 is also reduced to $27.96 per collection. These designs include some collections digitized in Generations (which includes .GEN format). Of course, all standard machine formats are included. Design sizes vary per collection. As more and more embroiderers have larger machines, I’ve moved to including designs targeted for those larger sewing fields. Please check the sizes of the designs, especially if you have an older Janome (.sew format) or use a POEM/Huskygram/Singer EU.

Project Collections & Patterns

Products in the Project Collections group include primarily two types:

• Quick Projects for Generations. These are really “lessons” designed specifically for Generations users to learn a specific technique. Includes PDF lesson and associated files (artwork and .GEN).
• Sewing + Embroidery Projects. Include any necessary patterns, instructions and designs.

Need More Info?

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