Celebrate National Embroidery Month!
Did you know that February is National Embroidery Month? Now’s the perfect time to get back to being creative. We’ve survived another major holiday season, for many of us that was Christmas. And for many of us in the northern hemisphere, it is cold and the skies are gray. Yes, we oocasionally have gray days even here in southern Arizona and my idea of cold is anything below 65 degrees. Just goes to show you perception is relative!
So celebrate our own month! Why not treat yourself to some embroidery? Or better yet, why not renew your dedication to improving and expanding your embroidery skills and knowledge? You know you want to! Here are some ideas:
Attend a Webinar of Your Choice.
Webinars range from free to $10, some may be more. But that’s still less than you’d pay to attend a class—especially if you had to cross an ocean! In my free webinars, we have attendees from across the U.S. and Canada, to the UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Luxembourg, and Australia. Find out more about my webinars in this post.
Learn a New Tcchnique
Have you tried appliqué? This is one of my favorite techniques. With some slight variations, you can turn it into a free-standing design. How about fringing or 3D foam? Why not get an interesting design from a new designer? I mean a real designer like John Deer or Zundt Designs (or me!). You can find articles on the ‘net, free and low-cost webinars, or classes and special events at your dealer. And compared to the cost of your machine, they’re a drop in the bucket!
Improve Your Knowledge of Embroidery Designs
The more you know about how a design is constructed the easier it is to produce higher quality results. The best way to learn that is to get inside the head of a professional digitizer. Digitizers need to know how stitches, fabric, thread, needles, and the machine affect the design. Learn what they’ve discovered without having to become a digitizer. I share that information in Anatomy of a Design: How to Think Like a Digitizer and Become a Better Embroiderer.
Dealers are great for teaching you how to use your machine but very rarely are dealers or their staff professional digitizers who’ve produced commercial-grade designs. Take classes from people who are experts in the topic you want to learn.
Learn to Digitize
While certainly not for everyone, many embroiderers at some point hanker to create their own design every now and then. I started because I was tired of trying to free motion multiple identical designs (and I’m rather a perfectionist). I’ll warn you, digitizing can be frustrating, rewarding, and highly addictive!
Many embroiderers, including both home and commercial, simply don’t have the time or the desire it takes to learn how to punch a design “the old fashioned way.” Today, there are automated programs that work quite well. They’ll do the initial hard work and then you can just change some stitch settings here, change an angle there, and put your own designer touch on it and have a design in minutes instead of hours (or days, if you are just starting!). Editing is far easier than digitizing from scratch!
One such program is Generations and I’m writing a thorough learn to digitize training course based on it. I can have you creating a design after the first unit. In fact, after the introduction, that’s the first thing we do: create a simple design. We’ll then go on to look at how to create a more interesting design and finally, I’ll challenge you with a project to create from scratch. I even include the artwork!
Unit 1 will get you off the ground with a guided tour of the Generations interface, how to auto-digitize a design, and how to put your own touch on it. Continue with additional units to go as far as you want.
If you’re looking for a thorough understanding of not only Generations, but how to digitize like a pro, you won’t find anything better than this. Real-life experience, real life tips and tricks from a real-life digitizer.
Of course, it will be rather difficult to learn such a program if you don’t actually own it…
Get a New Digitizing System
It took a lot of arm-twisting to get me to really look at Generations (and about 5 years). Afterall, what professional digitizer with years of experience and thousands of designs under their belt produced in the more traditional manner would promote such a program? Why, its sacrilege!
But let’s face it. The masses want instant results easily. “I want it now” and “don’t make me think” and “I don’t have time” are common outcries (or “I’m too old”–no you are not!). You still want professional results.
Well, guess what? You can get them with Generations. It has auto-digitizing to get you started and then “manual punch” tools for power users like me. Its the best of both worlds. You decide how far you want to go and at what pace.
If you can’t make designs in your current software, why not trade it in? When you’re tired of your car or its too old or causes you too many problems, you trade it in. Why not your software? Why not get something that has a solid training program that will take you by the hand and teach you not only how to “push the buttons” (the manual will teach you that) but how to think like a “real” digitizer?
Not Ready to Trade In?
If you can’t quite make that commitment, do like you do when looking for a new car. Take it for a test drive! Structured test drives are available to let you trial the full version of the software plus have a “driver’s ed” experience through free webinars to get you out of park and onto the highway in no time!
Make a Resolution
OK, so we were all supposed to do that a month ago for New Year’s. How many have you broken so far? Why not make one that’s fun and enjoyable? Renew your relationship with your embroidery machine.
If you’re a commercial embroiderer, make a commitment to have some fun time with embroidery. Then use it to promote a new technique or some products. People are always looking for “what’s new?” Add some new samples, rearrange the old ones, and get rid of those dusty, faded really old ones!
Most all of us got into embroidery because we have that urge to create. It’s easy to fall into a rut. Find something to ignite that spark again!
Related Posts
Notice: The copyright of the article Celebrate National Embroidery Month! is owned by Lindee Goodall. Permission to republish Celebrate National Embroidery Month! in print or online must be granted by the author in writing. Here are articles I have written that you can freely use as long as you retain my bio info.
