I am new to machine embroidery and I don't know how to access embroidery designs from the Internet. Do you need a special programme? Do you have to pay a fortune for it? Can anyone help, please? Thank you

My Pfaff came with a program which allows me to see the design, then I use it to transfer from computer to sewing machine. Downloads are usually put into a folder on your computer, then copied to your preferred program, to transfer to machine. Cheers from South Australia.

Welcome to our little family of Cuties!!! Come on in often and ask any questions, People are very helpful here. Hugs, Judy, in Amarillo, Texas...

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Lots of advice - welcome to Cute

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Welcome to the Cute site. You have received lots of excellent advice. I hope to see you here again and again. You will soon see Cute is the best the internet has. Again, welcome and we are glad to have you/ Lillian

Welcome to our international family, Enjoy yourself in your new hobby and ask as many questions as you need. If you notice on the top bar there is a Q&A this is well worth reading it may help with some of those questions. Also a InBox icon this is where you can send a personal message to someone (only they will see) and they can message you back. There will be a Red 1 if you have a message to read. Once again Welcome to Cute. Marian/ Sydney Australia

Well welcome to this great site and I see you have lots of advice. I'm sure you'll find it easy to do. Love Chris, Newcastle, Australia.

OESD has a free program called ARTSIZER that is described below.

Publisher's description
This program allows you to size, rotate, mirror and convert designs to another home format. It reads and writes most embroidery formats: .art, .arx, .pes, .pec, .emd, .gnc, .hus, .shv, .vp3, .vip, .jef, .sew, .exp, .pcs, .pcd, .pcq, .pcm, .csd, .xxx, and .dst.

This is not digitizing. I use it on laptop to look at designs and send them to a USB stick or directly to embroidery machine. It does jef designs which my Bernina software doesn't.

Learn lots from this group of very creative, helpful people. Ask lots of questions and look backat your post for answers.

SQ

Please remember when you download a free design to do it in your particular machine format--eg: .hus/ .pes/ .vp3/ .jef----your machine will have specific format that allows your machine to read the file you are downloading.

Some websites have a window that pops up automatically allowing you to download and save--giving the file a name. Others go through putting the design in a Cart and Checking Out. Follow their instructions. Most I am finding require you to Register--Login---Use a Password.

Welcome to Cute. I hope we see you here often.


brittanycooper gave some good information. You also need to remember where you downloaded the files too. Start by coming here and download the FREE design that is given every day. Ask any question you have and when you get answers please let Cuties know if they helped or you need further assistance. Costs of designs come in a wide range. I suppose it is more about what you are willing to pay. Sign up for some newsletters so you will find out about sales. Good luck

Since you have already found this site, I'm sure you'll be able to find other sites and there are a lot!

Most sites have freebies. You usually have to register with all sites whether it's free or a purchase. You select the design you want and put it in your cart. You then checkout just like you'd do at any site like Amazon, After you checkout, you download your design to your computer. Each site may have its own way to download from it. You might be able to download it directly from the checkout page. Some sites have you go to your account with thate site to find your download key. Others will send you the designs by email. So be sure to read that the site says about how to download. Some sites give an option to have the designs sent to you on a cd. It is expensive, but an option. Also, the designs may come in a Zip file. So you may have to open that to see/download your design.

Different sites have different ways of downloading the design after you checkout. Sometimes if it is a freebie, you can download it without going through checkout like this site, but most of the time you have to put freebies in your basket.

Since you are first starting out, I'd like to suggest that you start organizing your designs as well. There is a whole thread on this site about different ways people organize their design collection. Basically, for me, I save the designs 3 times. When I first get a desgn I download it to folder that I call "downloaded embroidery." I then have a folder I call "Author Order." Each website I purchase from had its own subfolder. Then I copy it to a 3rdfolder I call "Designs By Topic." In that folder, I have subfolders for topics...like dogs, flowers, embossed designs, etc. So it is sort of like a dictionary.

I know that this looks like a lot of fuss, but 2 years from now you'll have a hard time finding a design if you don't have an organized way to look for them.

Finally, after 10 years of building my collection, I figured out that I need to add something to the name of the file before saving it so that I have a clue as to where I got it in the first place. Like, JND is for Julias Needle Designs, EmbLib is for Embroidery Library. Sometimes I don't sort the designs that are in my Downloaded Designs folder and by the next day, I can't remember where I got it!

I'm sure once you get it all figured out, it'll become automatic and you'll be able to find your designs on your computer easily.

Oh, one more piece of advice. Periodically ,backup your designs frome your computer to something like a thumb drive, or a storage box that is separate from your computer. One computer crash can delete all your designs and you'll be very sad.

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by marianb 30 Apr 2016

This is very Wise Advise and well worth the time to do..

No special program unless you want to have the designs appear as an icon so you can see them. Then I use Embird and their iconizer. The iconizer is cheap but you need the expensive basic program to use it.

Just hit the download button on the design and if it comes in a zip you have to open that and select your format. Not hard at all.

Try Sew What Pro from Sands computing. Easy to use and not expensive. http://sandscomputing.com/ And they are super nice people. Very helpful.

Good luck and you should have a lot of fun.

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by Sewmum1 30 Apr 2016

I bought the icon viewer program from sands and I love it. It runs in the background and I don't have to do anything. I can see all the files as icons on my computer