Embroidery digitizing is a serious business. Creating an embroidered design from scratch can take a relatively small amount of time and money, or you can use a pre-existing pattern as a template for your DIY project. Digitizing your work will make it more accessible and affordable for other artists, who might decide to buy the pattern you used as well as one of their products with the design. The cost savings could help offset the initial digitization fee over time and also converts jpg to dst.

But since the service has been around for so long, there are plenty of misconceptions out there that could prevent some people from looking into this option before they invest in traditional embroidery services.

1. No Matter the size of the letter

This often prevents people from considering digitizing their work, but it’s not that difficult to send an embroidery design to a commercial embroidery service or print shop. Sure, the design is usually smaller than you probably expect, but they can figure out ways to scale down your work if it’s more than a couple of stitches wide.

2. It’s Not Easy

The digitization process is relatively straightforward for most services today. You can have several versions of your design on file at one time with the same pattern number, so you need to modify your letters as needed with each new version of your pattern throughout the process until you’re happy with the result.

3. You Can’t Use Artwork from the Internet

If the service you want to use isn’t too picky, you can send digital files as-is as long as they’re under a specific size. Online digitizing services usually have a variety of transfer methods available for this, but if you’re looking for something that works regularly, embroidery will probably be delicate.

4. Embroidery Things Are Too Complex

Pre-existing embroidery patterns are line drawings with a little bit of shading thrown in here and there to help people understand the shapes of each stitch. You can do reasonably well to convert these into digitized images.

5. It’s Too Limited to Be Effective

On the contrary, you don’t have to worry about losing your design in the system and having it disappear forever if you’re not careful. Most embroidery digitizers also offer unlimited storage, so you could even use the same digitized pattern in multiple designs over time and across multiple designs that way.

6. It’s Too Expensive to Do Yourself

Most embroidery digitizing services charge a fee for the initial digitization, plus additional fees (usually less than $1.00 per letter) to access all of your versions of the file. This covers storing the files and making changes as needed, so it’s usually comparable to all-inclusive embroidery services at this point.

7. It Can’t Be Customized to Your Style

Most digitizing providers offer their services in several formats that can help you keep all of your designs under control, including personal designs that you can download for free through their websites or apps if you want to compare what you’re working with between them any time.

8. It Takes Too Long

The digitization process can be quick, depending on the size of your design. You can check the size of the generated files through the digitizing software, although you’ll probably always need to make a few settings adjustments to your letters as you go along to simplify the workflow.

9. It Can’t Be Dyed or Stitched Into Fabric

Though it’s not practical to do this for most digitizing services, there are a few that offer these options if you’re willing to pay extra. The quality is only as good as your original embroidery work at this point, so expect whatever softness is present in your designs to be fully reproduced here too.

10. It’s Only For Web Design

Though some websites offer digitizing services for this purpose, it’s not very common. You can also often convert what you’ve created to other digital formats, even if the project finishes up as a virtual image on a computer.

Conclusion

It never hurts to do a little bit of research before you decide to digitize your work. There are plenty of good options out there that’ll get the job done just fine.