St. Patrick’s Day Quick Project
Looking to put together a design for St. Patrick’s Day? This new Quick Project and webinar will walk you through all the steps you need to take to digitize this design from scratch in Generations embroidery digitizing software.
Use the Built-In Tools
Using tools on the Punch bar and Create bar you’ll digitize first the shamrock, then the hat, then the letters. You’ll learn how to turn the first two elements into Building Blocks that can be reused over and over. Finally, you’ll assemble the pieces into one design, eliminating excess layers of stitches.
Looks complex? Not when I break it down into easy bit-size steps. If you have a basic understanding of using Generations, you’ll be ale to digitize this design. And if not? In that case, the designs are included and you can work with them.
Project Webinar
The webinar for this project will be in the weekly free Generations Workshop on Thursday, March 4 at noon MST. If you miss it, don’t worry! All the webinars are recorded and you can watch them for free too! The full list of webinars is listed.
What You’ll Learn with this Project
Even if you aren’t Irish, you’ll learn all sorts of useful things you can do with Generations:
- How to break down a design into pieces
- How to use the Punch Ring and Heart on the Punch bar
- How to work with Create Satin Side-to-Side tool (Create bar)
- How to work with Create True Ellipse tool (Create bar)
- How to work with Create Freehand area tool (Create bar)
- How to use the Insert Text tool
- How to Divide with A Line
- How to create an outline from an area
- How to change stitch properties
- How to use Guides
- How to create and use Building Blocks
This project, along with several others, can be found in the shop and to celebrate the month of March, projects are 50% off!
February 2010: Letter from Lindee
Here we are in the midst of National Embroidery Month and I hope you’re celebrating it appropriately! If not, here are some ways to grow your skills and share your love beyond the special Valentines in your life.
New! Technique Projects
Our weekly free Generations Workshop Webinar continues to grow and the attendees are definitely pushing me to learn more about this program. Participants have also requested written project instructions and as I put those together, you’ll find them here on this website. These projects are carefully written and illustrated so that with a basic familiarity of the program, you should be able to complete the project. Although they are titled Quick Projects, they definitely were not quick to write up into a publishable form!
These technique-based projects are designed to teach you how to leverage the tools in Generations to produce a particular result. In the first three projects, I’ve covered Redwork, Fringing, and Manual Techniques without Artwork. Leanne Church, Education and Support Coordinator for Generations with Echidna Sewing Products in Australia has also generously donated a project working with lettering in Generations.
Each project includes illusrated step-by-steps to walk you through recreating the design or technique on your own. Full projects include sample files, which may be the actual designs in native format, additional designs to illustrate a technique in a “real life” manner, and art work to create the file. You can try a sample Quick Project with the redwork instructions. This sample is much shorter than the full projects and does not include any auxilliary files. It is designed to give you a flavor of the much longer projects.
These projects are ideal for someone who wants to learn a particular technique or wants to enhance their skills with or outside of the Learn to Digitize series. They are not designed for the person who just installed Generations. for that look to Getting Started with Generations.
Blankets for Haiti
Another contribution is from Margaret Bailey who is making blankets for Haiti. The need there is great for many things and you can send some love with a blanket. According to Margaret, “I am making blankets for Hati—they need 10, 000! Project Linus is the group coordinating this effort. They want fleece blankets 42 X 60 or larger. I’m making mine 1¼ yards and finish with a shell stitch using the overcast stitch on the machine. To make it more fun I am putting an embroidery design on each one. If the design is red-work, I stitch it directly on the blanket; if it is a filled design, I stitch it on a piece of cotton then sew or appliqué that to the blanket.”
The heart design is shown on this red blanket (very suitable for Valentine’s Day, don’t you think?) is from my new Frames and Borders Building Blocks collection. You can download Margaret’s instructions for finishing the blanket and visit the national Project Linus website.
Learn to Digitize Training Series
Units 1 (Getting Started) and 2 (Keyboard Lettering) are shipping and participants are sending in their projects. It’s wonderful see how great they’re doing and get such positive feedback. Unit 3 is in the works, a lot on graphics and design. You can be technically good but your designs will suffer if you don’t understand some basic principals of design and color. I also show you how to select and prepare graphics for easier and quicker digitizing. This first series is taking all the digitizing theory and applying it in Generations. Once you understand theory and have a working experience in one program, it is relatively easy to transfer the knowledge to other digitizing programs.
If you’re buried under snow in your area of the country, what better thing do you have to do than give yourself some time to really learn a skill you’ve wanted and maximize your investment in embroidery? No one is “too old” and besides, challenging your brain in new and different ways is healthy and will contribute to keeping you alert and sharp.
Current Freebies on the Site
Free Weekly Digitizing Workshop Webinars
Please join us for a live weekly digitizing workshop generously hosted by embroidery.com and yours truly. Together, James Lyman or Darin Andersen and I will be hosting this free webinar demonstrating digitizing techniques to answer your burning questions.
Topics covered so far: auto digitizing a hand drawn image, creating redwork from an image downloaded from the internet, free-standing lace, Building Blocks, monograms, and motifs.
All techniques are demonstrated in Generations software but you are not required to own it to join us (although, you may want it once you see what we’re doing with it!). Many techniques can be done in other programs but you’ll be on your own to figure that out!
Sessions are free and recorded so you can watch ones you’ve missed or rewatch any that you’d like to see again. (I’m told I go over it too fast—I am trying to slow down, honest!) While there are no written transcripts, most of the content is covered in the Learn to Digitize series.
To take advantage of these free webinars plus discounts on associated products and class materials, you must be a member at embroidery.com (that’s free too!). And you must register for the class by “purchasing” a free ticket through the e-class area. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be emailed your own personal login link. Each student needs their own link unless you’re all sitting around the same computer!
You can also sign up as a member of EClub. Read this post to find out how to get a one month membership for free.
New! Quick Projects for Digitizers
If you have some basic experience with Generations and just want to learn some specific techniques, then these new Quick Projects are just the thing!
These projects are designed to teach you new ways of using your digitizing software to create a specific embroidery technique or learn how to use specific tools in Generations™. You can pick and choose from a growing library to learn the types of techniques you are most interested in learning. In time, projects will be added for other digitizing programs.
They’re also a great way to give you a taste of the full Learn to Digitize series as well as to supplement what you learn in that course.
Projects include an necessary artwork (or a link to a image) plus the completed sample(s). Some projects may include short videos and other example designs.
Current projects assume a basic working knowledge of Generations™. If you are a raw newbie, it is recommended you start with Unit 1-Getting Started with Generations to get you on a solid footing with the program.
Quick projects not only teach you how to recreate a specific technique, they provide insider tips from a professional digitizer about the whys so that you can take the technique and apply it in your own designs.
You can even try a free sample Quick Project. Nearly Instant Redwork demonstrates how to auto-digitize line art to create the look of traditional hand-stitched redwork. Redwork is a frequently requested technique and you can learn how to do it by following the fully illustrated steps. This free sample includes a link to the artwork used but does not include any other files.
In addition to my projects, Leanne Church, Education and Support Coordinator for Generations with Echidna Sewing Products in Australia has also generously donated a project working with lettering in Generations.
- Patriotic Golf Ball – how to use the built-in tools to manually create a golf ball on a tee with the American or Australian flag (2 designs, 46 pages).
- Fringe Benefits – how to manually create and use fringe in Generations (18 pages, 5 designs)
- Nearly Instant Redwork – how to turn line art into redwork (6 pages, free!)
- NOEL Holiday Design – turning TrueType letters into an attractive holiday banner or mini-quilt wall hanging (submitted by Leanne Church, 14 pages, free!)
