• Free monthly Generations workshop webinars, second Thursday each month through the summer 7PM Pacific
• Embroidery Extravaganza September 9-11, 2019 in Columbia, SC (Live Event)
• ECTreat – The Embroidery Central Retreat - September 17 & 18, 2010 in Salt Lake City (Shilo Inn Suites Hotel)

Free Generations Webinar Workshops

July 8, 2010 7PM Pacific Daylight Time
August 12, 2010 7PM Pacific Daylight Time

Live webinars hosted by embroidery.com and recorded for later viewing. Topics vary, submit your requests here,

Embroidery Extravaganza

September 9-11, 2019 in Columbia, SC hosted by Creative Sewing Machine Center. This is live event and has an amazing line-up of speakers and educators. If you live anywhere near there, you should come! Download a pdf flyer or register for the event.

ECTreat – The Embroidery Central Retreat

September 17 & 18, 2010 in Salt Lake City (Shilo Inn Suites Hotel)
This is an entire day seminar and will be repeated each day. In addition to an attendee ticket there are options for attendee plus guest (guest does not receive a goodie bag) or multiple ticket discount (4 attendees and over will save you $10 per ticket). Special room rates are also available—advanced notice with Embroidery Central is required. More information and registration sign-up.

Recorded Live!

All of the following sessions are recorded from a live workshop where I’m working right in the Generations software to demonstrate topics and answer questions based on viewer’s submissions. I’ll have to say, it was pretty scary at first because I barely knew Generations myself but writing the course, preparing for the webinar (one week I put in 70 hours of preparation!), and digitizing building blocks got me up to speed and now I feel pretty comfortable in the software. Well, as comfortable as a Mac girl can be in a Windows program!

10,000 Hours

The original concept of the webinars was that viewers could learn the program along with me. If you’ve read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he talks about the “10,000 hour rule” meaning that those who have become experts have 10,000 hours of practice under their belts. Well, I certainly have that when it comes to digitizing but Generations is a polar opposite to my “native” digitizing program, Punto, the one I “grew up with” and worked with for 15 years. I had to rethink how to do even the most basic things. You’ll see in the early sessions that I sometimes don’t have a clue what I’m doing! Fortunately, I have James to bail me out.

And while I certainly don’t yet have 10,000 hours with Generations, I’m certain that with the 12-16 hour days I often pull working on the Learn to Digitize Course, that I’m well on my way!

The point is, you may discover some tips watching the videos but you won’t really learn them until you put them into practice and you practice often. Fire up those neurons in your brain often enough and soon it will feel natural.

Since the webinars are not really structured for organized learning, if you need a less helter skelter approach, a better course of action is the Learn to Digitize Training Series. I’m just now finishing the videos for unit 3 so I hope to make my goal of a March 31 release date.

Open to All

You don’t have be a Generations owner or user to attend these sessions. In fact, a number of attendees have written and said they learned things that they never thought to do in their own programs and some people have been so impressed they made the switch from their old software to Generations.

Generations does take dongle trade-ins. There is no rule that states you must learn the digitizing program you have before moving on to something you can use. Why drag yourself down with a clunky program you can’t use? You got it to have fun and be creative. What’s holding you back?

How to See the Recorded Webinars

To watch any of the sessions, you will need to go to GenWebinars and log in (you need to be a member of embroidery.com) or create a free account there. Next, “purchase” a free ticket to one of the sessions, then sit back and watch. Unfortunately you can’t view them on a Mac; you can only view them through Windows Media Player (it’s a Citrix thing).

Schedule of Previous Sessions

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:

Now you can try out some sample project lessons with these freebies!

Nearly Instant Redwork

This project was created based on a live webinar workshop that demonstrates viewer requested techniques. Redwork is quite popular and with a few simple tricks up your sleeve, easy to do in Generations. Traditionally digitized redwork can take hours. Image a complex design that you are asked to trace with a pencil. Of course there are a few rules:

• once you place your pencil on the paper, you can’t lift it
• you have to trace over every line once and the fewest number of lines twice to avoid lifting the pencil

With Generations, you can digitize redwork in minutes with no tracing and this brief lesson will show you how.

Like those grocery store sample bites, this a mere tidbit compared to the full length projects. This free redwork project lesson includes only a link to the image and no sample embroidery files. Full projects have additional materials which may include embroidery files, artwork, and videos.

Noel from Leanne

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. This project shows fun and clever ways to turn keyboard lettering in Generations into an interesting and eye-catching wallhanging. This project makes a nice supplement to Unit 2 in the Learn To Digitize Training series, which really goes into working with the Insert Text lettering function in Generations.

Download these two free projects in the shop.

Ready for a Full Size Version?

At the time of this post, there are two full-featured full-length projects:

• Exploring Manual Punch Techniques
• Fringe Benefits

Exploring Manual Punch Techniques

This project walks you through creating two golf ball logos, one with an American flag and one with the Australian flag and was based on embroidered shirt I saw on someone at a restaurant. The Aussie version is for all my friends down under where Generations is the number one preferred program for digitizing in its price range. Using no artwork at all, I’ll guide you step-by-step to create your own versions. A full 48 pages of color illustrated steps will leaving you feeling confident to try your own projects.

Fringe Benefits

Ever wanted to add fringe to a design? It’s actually pretty easy when you learn these techniques. In this lesson, you’ll create a simple fringed flower, learn 3 ways of anchoring fringe, why embossing is the secret to anchoring fringe and how and where to do it, plus how to turn the embroidered stitches into fringe. This 18-page fully illustrated step-by-step guide includes 4 sample files demonstrating the techniques covered in the project plus a fully digitized free embroidery design using the fringing technique.

Special Introductory Offer!

Through the end of March 2010, get either one of the full-featured projects for half off!

• Exploring Manual Punch Techniques
• Fringe Benefits