When you are designing single color embroidery the holes in your design or the open or unembroidered areas are just as important as the embroidered areas. By leaving spaces in your design open you are adding emphasis to the areas which are embroidered. The design to the left is part of one of my newest collection called "Fantastic Flora" you can view it in its entirety at http://www.annthegran.com/kenparsons_index.html The entire collection was digitized in multiple colors but each design can also be run as a single color design.

Yesterday we presented a webinar entitled "Embroider Me Thinner" the attendance was great and so were the questions which I have included below. If you missed the webinar you can still see it. An archive version is available at www.annthegran.com

What languages will the Web Translator translate into?

Ken: The web translator translates into Italian, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Portugese.


What is the best way to hide a fat tummy?
Ken: The best way to keep attention away from any aspect you percieve as a flaw is to take the attention elsewhere. By placing embroidery at the neckline or hemline you can put the attention where you want it.


Is this to be used only for items that you are sewing from scratch, or can it also be used for purchased items?
Ken: By all means no, it was actually designed for people who would be embroidering on preassembled garments. The reason we show you the pattern pieces is so that will be able to plan you designs on the flat sections of the garment to get a beeter idea of how they will fit in those areas.


Can I use any patterns in his software? Is there anything else I need to but? Great question, Pamela. I'm going to let Ken address that.

Ken: The software can read and write all popular machine formats, so you cn use it with any design you have in your library. I will also recalculate the stitch count as you make your designs larger and smaller.

In choosing a garment, are you restricted to the garment designs in the program?
Ken: At this time yes you are restricted to the patterns that come in the software, however you can resize the pattern pieces if you do not find your size listed.

will Ken's software work with all embroidery designs? Or just with those he has digitized? It will work with all embroidery designs, but it has extra functionality with his designs. We'll pass your question on to Ken for him to answer.

Ken: The software will work with all the popular formats, however if you use my designs there is the additional advantage that it will automatically adjust the density, pull compensation and underlay to sew out perfectly on your chosen fabric.

what is the range of garment size in the software? Great question, Maura. I'm going to let Ken address that. thanks!

Ken: The sizes usually rane from a size 8 to a size 18 but it varies from pattern to pattern. You can however change the dimensions of the pattern peices to whatever size you want.

In placing the last small grape leaf it appears it overlaps some of the grapes. Does the software automatically remove the overlapping stitches?

Ken: No it does not remove overlapping stitches, however an an area as small as that you should not see an icrease in thread breaks or a significant increase in the thickness of the embroidery.

Will the software allow you to color sort to simplify thread changes?

Ken: Yes there is a color sort button on the top of the screen.

Does the software establish multiple hoop locations automatically?
Ken: Yes, once you import you multiposition hoop to the design location, the Split Wizard is made active (which is the last button on the upper left of the screen) This will talk you through the process of splitting the design and allow you to sew it out in sections.


Okay. So I can do my digitizing with my current software, then use Ken's for placement? Found your question, Janet. I will have Ken answer it.

Ken: Yes you can definately use my software to place designs you have digitized yourself.


What version of PE design is being used? Hi, Mary. Ken is actually using KP Compositions, a new software that he designed himself. Where can I get that software? KP Compositions is available exclusively on AnnTheGran.com. when he changed the size of the design did it redigitized and adjust the stitch count for the fabric he choose? Great question. I'm going to pass that to Ken.
Ken: Yes it will automatically recalculate the stitching of any design when you make it larger or smaller.


Will this software auto-split? Great question, Joan. I'm going to let Ken take that one. can you use any designs?
Ken: Yes, once you import you multiposition hoop to the design location, the Split Wizard is made active (which is the last button on the upper left of the screen) This will talk you through the process of splitting the design and allow you to sew it out in sections.

how much :D $164.99

Will this program print out templates for placement on the actual garment? Especially in those we are making from the start? can this be used with any designs or is it limited to the designs he does?
Ken: You can print out each location (individual stitch file) in exact size complete with start and stop point to use as hooping templates. Again you can use any design.


What is the BEST way to hide a VERY short waist......V-neckline design, or diagonal design. AND how can I disguise it from the back? I definitely want to hear Ken's answer to that one!

Ken: This is a tricky question because it depends on other factors. If you embroider a design just below the natural waistline completely around the dress, this will create the illusion of a lower waist (and will work from the back and front) , however this could also accentuate your hips. A vee shaped embroidery is probbly the universal best answer.

Will this software incorporate all True Type Fonts already installed within your operating system? Great question, Cheryl. I'm going to pass that one to Ken.
Ken: At this moment the software will only embroider lettering using the 5 fonts which come installed in the program. You can however import a stitch file that you have created with lettering from any program.

I often talk about the negative space that is formed by the embroidery designs we create. This concept is however lost on some people so I would like to both elaborate and illustrate what I mean. In the image on the left you can see the design that I have created by combinig different designs from a couple of different design collections. You can also see the location shape that I created to use as a reference point for creating my final embroidery shape. This final embroidery overall shape is what should relate to both the place on the garment on which it is placed and the reason we are using embroidery to begin with. For example, if as we have in the example above, chosen to create a diagonal design which starts on the upper right of the shell top and ends at the lower left of the garment then this is the negative space that the design will occupy. Compositions project based embroidery design software asks you to make this decition in the beginning of the design process, so that you can keep this valuable piece of information always available throughout the design process. To see how Compositions works go to www.kenparsonsdesigns.com

While it varies from one machine to another 12.1mm - 12.7mm is usually the the largest stitch you can create. Any stitch longer than that will be broken up into a series of jump stitches. The smallest stitch you can usually sew is .1mm. When you sew stitches that are larger than the maximum you will significanly slow down the embroidery machine as it is embroidering 2 or 3 or even more stitches for each stitch larger than the maximum stitch length. If your machine has trimmers you can choose to have them activated at what ever interval of jump stitches you desire. You can have them activated at 2 jumps in a row or higher. This allows you to exactly control when the machine jumps and when it trims.
Getting back to small stitches if you actually take advantage of the smallest stitches possible you will probably experience thread breaks. The smallest stitch you can safely sew out is abut 3mm. So if you are experiencing problems with thread breaks, excessive trimming, or sewing speed you might want to consider some of these factors.
If you have not signed up for our webinar "Embroider Me Thinner" tomorrow ar 2 PM EST go to www.annthegran.com and sign up today.

I have mentioned in previous posts density is a very powerful design tool. I have also mentioned the concept of developing a foreground, mid-ground and background in your embroidery designs. Earlier I talked about using stitch types and underlay to define these areas. There are two other tools that you can use to develop these area of your design; they are density and color. The forground is the most important part of your design so you probaby want to make these design elements pop by using the most intense colors, full density and the most powerful stitch types (satin stitches).
To create the mid-ground you want to decrease your density and mute your thread colors. To create the background you want to take these concepts one step further. If you are using fill stitches in both the mid-ground and the background you should use a longer stitch length in the midground to make the thread reflect more light than the background thereby giving it more prominance. You can choose to combine these different effects or just employ one but I think you will find that these concepts will increase the three dimensionality of you designs and make them appear more realistic. To see how these concepts are employed in my design colections go to www.kenparsonsdesigns.com

What says summer better than watermelons? The very simple design on the left is from our "Fresh from the Grove" collection. I just clicked and dragged the watermelon design onto my location in the lower left hand corner of the dinner napkin. It came in a little smaller than I wanted so I enlarged it and rotated it to fit within my chosen location shape and in couple of fast and easy steps I created the perfect napkins for a casual outdoor dinner party. I chose not to add a monogram because I wanted to keep it simple, but one could be added to make the project even more personal.

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Below is the beginning of an article I wrote for Profitable Embroiderer in June of 2002. It was written with an eye to those among you that are considering selling products they embroiderer. While I don't think it is a majority of my current readers, I though you might find it interesting.
Every season brings with it new opportunities. Winter signals the opening of ski and snowboarding season. Fall opens hunting season and foliage tours. In spring we plant flowers, go cycling and get in shape for the season to come. Summer, which is just around the corner, is the season of the outdoors. This is the season of school vacations, picnics, trips to the shore, the mountains and national landmarks. It is the season of escapes, both from big cities and small towns. This is the time of year when people leave their homes to visit somewhere new and different. It is the season when customers come to you from all over the world. It doesn't matter if you are located in a remote farm community or an urban center, a sleepy seaside village or the nation's capital. Every location is the perfect vacation destination for someone. To read the rest of this article go to http://www.stitches.com/stitches/mag/apparel_treasure_trips/index.html

Did you know that Compositions project based embroidery design software allows to to read and write just about any commercial and home embroidery file formats? These include CSD, DST, EXP, HUS, PCS, PES, PESv6, SEW, SHV, VIP, and XXX. So if you have a file in a format that your machine can't read you can import (we call it merge stitch file) it into Compositions and export it in whatever format you wish. The software also allows you to re-size the design and will adjust the stitch count proportionately for the new size. So not only is the software a great tool for combining designs together, adding lettering, planning out you hoopings, and visualizing your finished design on the actual garment, it also will convert file formats for you. To see all that Compositions can do view the demo at: http://www.annthegran.com/kparsons/SWF/KP%20Compositions%20Web%20Final.html

In the example on the left I used Compositions project based embroidery software to divide a border skirt design into 5 separate hoopings. Because you can always go back and forth between your individual hoopings (we call them locations) and the view of the entire garment you can see how the entire design is going to look before you sew it out. This allows you to quickly and easily make minor color and placement adjustments to make sure the design works well as a whole. This elliminates a lot of the guess work you couldn't completely avoid before. To see a full demo of Compositions go to http://www.annthegran.com/kparsons/SWF/KP%20Compositions%20Web%20Final.html

The final date and time has been finalized for our webinar entitled "Embroider Me Thinner" It will be held on June 27th at 2PM EST. To register just go to www.annthegran.com. It is already getting filled up and we only have 1000 slots so if you are interested sign up now.

To be effective and beautiful embroidery doesn't need to be complex or ornate. You can take a simple stock design and add lettering to it and come up with a perfect design solution for just about any garment or home decor item. I merely combined a rooster from my "Barnyard Birds" collection with the words "King of the Barnyard" which I translated in Compositions project based embroidery software to French and created a kitchen towel perfect for any Provencal culinary experience. See the software at www.kenparsonsdesigns.com

There are more ways to utilize the same digitizing concepts that you would use to create embroidered fringe. One of those is to create three-dimensional flowers. The method is essentially the same as creating fringe except you digitize the wide columns in concentric circles starting with the largest and making them narrower and narrower as you get closer to the center of the flower. After the flower is digitized you anchor the center with a small round fill stitch. You then trim the bobbin stitches (only the wide columns that make up the petals of the flower) on the reverse side, this will free up the outside of the flower and you are done. The result is a puffy three-dimensional flower.

There are lots of different effects that you can create when you are digitizing your designs to make them even more 3-dimensional and textural, one of those is to add embroidered fringe. While this effect is very dramatic, it is actually very easy. Once you determine where you want to place the fringe within your design you digitize a wide column stitch, one side of that column will determine where the fringe will be attached to the garemnt and the other side of the column will determine the length of the fringe. Along the edge of the column where you want to attach it to the garment you digitize a second thin column, this will serve as an anchor to hold that side of the column firmly to the garment. After you finish sewing out the design you merely turn the garment inside out and snip the bobbin thread from the wide column stitch which frees the threads in the front of the garment and you have fringe. If you have trimmers on your machine make sure they are turned off before you sew out the wide column stitch.

When you embroider on different fabrics you need to make sure that you alter your designs to make sure that they are going to sew out properly. Pull compensation, underlay and density all need to be changed, to make sure that the final embroidered design is not going to be distorted or pucker on the outside. To achieve this aim Compositions project based embroidery software prompts you to choose your fabric before you start creating your design and based upon that fabric, it automaticaly adjusts these three factors when using any of the KPD Designables or Classic design collections, to make sure that the final design will sew out perfectly every time.
To see how Compositions accomplishes these goals plase visit us at www.kenparsonsdesigns.com

The practice of using puffy foam underneath satin or column sitiches to create a 3-D look to parts of your embroidery has been very popular on and off for the past at least ten years but this method of creating raised areas of your design becomes totally impractical if the garment upon which the embroidery is being placed is to be dry cleaned. The dry cleaning solution wil dissolve the foam and leave you with merely a very, very loose satin stitch. Another method to consider is to first digitize a skinny column stitch in the center of the final column stitch at full density. Then follow that with a slightly wider column stitch on top of that but still inside you final column stitch width and then finally finish that with your finished and top column stitch. Because none of your needle pentrations are in the same place you will not experience thread breaks, and you will end up with a significantly raised column stitch, which can serve as the focal point of your design. For example if you are digitizing a bouquet of roses and you want some of them to appear to more in the foreground use this underlay technique in varying degrees underneath the column stitches that make up those flowers. One row of underlay stitches under the roses you want in the mid-ground and two rows under the ones in the foreground and none under the ones you want to appear in the background. Try it it works. Good luck.

When I talked about blending colors in embroidery yesterday I mentioned the importance of first creating a good base of underlay to stabalize the fabric and create a good base for lower density embroidery. There are however, many other good reasons for using underlay. One function of underlay is evident in the example to the left. As you can see an edge walk underlay was used under the lettering. (for those of you unfamiliar with the term "edge walk" it simply means using a running stitch underlay which follows the edge of the shape) The function of this type of underlay is to make sure that the column stitches in the design remain crisp and clean. This is especcially important if you are embroidering on a fabric with a grain such as serge or twill, as column stitches have a tendency to follow the grain of the fabric on thse specific fabrics. When this occurs the columns tend to become jagged much like a bitmap image that has become pixelized and loose their definition. When you use an edge walk underlay the column stitches follow the running stitch as opposed to the grain of the fabric and remain crisp. The edge walk is an automatic function of all of the large lettering fonts included with Compositions project based embroidery software. To download your free trial copy to use for 30 days go to www.kenparsonsdesigns.com

Blending different thread colors together to create a smooth transition from one to another is probably the most difficult technique in digitizing. However when you are digitizing florals it is pretty much unavoidable. In the example to the left and the close-up above it you can see a couple of techniques you can employ fairly easily.
First it is very important to have a good underlay base to begin with. I recommend a diagonal lattice as this will give you the best coverage and stability. Once you have a good underlay you can be more creative with your top stitching densities. The big worry when blending thread colors together is build up of density where the two or in some cases three colors meet and overlap. So being conservative (as low as possible) with densities is always a good idea.
Another apect of blending to keep in mind is that you always want to make sure that the areas that you are blending are as parallel as possible, this will give you the smoothest progression from one color to another.
In the closeup of the petals you can see that the middle tone is laid out first it is then accentuated with both lighter and darker shades in a much lower density. The last step is to further define it with defining running stitches in a fourth and yellowish shade. The overall effect is a very lifelike and three-demensional Hibiscus. If you would like to see all 20 floral designs from the "Fabulous Florals" embroidery design collection you can see them at http://www.kenparsonsdesigns.com/viewables.php?cat=1&list=fabulous_florals

In the example (the letter E)on the left you will see how small lettering is digitized to make sure that it is going to sew well at only .16 inches, which of course would not be possible with an ordinary font.
Let's take a look at how he letter is constructed to make this possible. First look at the zigzag underlay which forms a base for the top stitching. This also serves to fill in any gaps in the top stitching which might result from the reduced density. What many people do when they are having a problem making small lettering legible is to increase the density. This is the opposite of what you should do. Because the column sttches that form the lettering are so skinny, it take many less stitches to get good coverage. Reducing your density to about 45 stitches per inch should yield good coverage and defined columns.
You might also notice that the stitches placed in the corners of the "E" are exagerated, this is because the stitches will actually pull in and become shorter when the letter is sewn out. The last feature that I want to mention is that the center bar of the "E" is digitized as a running stitch as opposed to a column stitch, this is because there is no way that it would be possible to sew out a column stitch that was that skinny. The running stitch serves to create the definition neccessary to make the letter recognizable as the capital letter "E", without causing thread breaks which would probably occur if you tried to create it as a column stitch. To see how both the "Minature Block and Script sew out in Compositions project based embroidery software you can download your free copy of Compositions to use for 30 days at www.kenparsonsdesigns.com

When you are designing embroidery for fashion and home decor your placement choice and the proportion of the design to the garment or home decor item are both crucial ingredients.
Depending on what your ultimate design goals are these two aspects will vary drastically from design to design.
For example if you are adding embroidery to your garment to make yourself look thinner, you might want to choose to create a rather large design and either place it diagonally as in the example to the left or vertically either in the center of the garment or off center, both work equally well.
These two techniques work equally well for different reasons. When we choose a diagonal placement it serves to force the eye to travel diagonally from top to bottom in in a fluid sweep focussing on the embroidery and not the garment, thus elongating the overall shape.
When you choose a central vertical placement the embroidery puts emphasis on the embroidery and the shape of the embroidery is noticed first and the shape of the garment fades into the background. When you choose an off center vertical placement, you are essentially dividing the garment into thirds vertically. Two thirds are blank and one third is embroidered. It doesn't matter which area the eye is drawn to whether it is the embroidered area or the blank areas the overall effect is still slimming. To see how easily you can combine designs together to create the ideal effect quckly and easily using Compositions project based embroidery software and actually see how it works on the garment before you stitch it out go to www.kenparsonsdesigns.com

When you are creating an embroidered logo or monogram you start with a definite image and probably placement (mostly left chest or a logo, cuff for a monogram)although there are some exceptions they are few and far between.
When you are creating fashion embroidery there are no rules. There is also a myriad of reasons for choosing to use embroidery. Just some of these reasons are:
To minimize or maximize body flaws or assets.
You can use embroidery to make a fabric look richer by adding texture and luster.
You can use embroidery can make yourself look taller. It can be used to make your neck look longer (as in the example to the left)or your shoulders look wider or narrower. Aside from just enhancing your sillouette, it can be used for loftier artistic goals. You can use it to make a fashion statement based upon what is going on in the art world or in society in general.
You can use it to reflect a nostalgic feel or look by looking to the past for cues as inspiration for designing a new updated retro creation.
Embroidery can be used in Home Décor to create a unifying element in a room by using it to bring together all of the different colors in the room into one design that unifies all of the disparate elements.
The most important thing is that you know what your final goal is before you start to design embroidery for a specific project. Again I urge you to take a look how Compsitions project based embroidery software helps you to make these vital design decisions. www.kenparsonsdesigns.com