Hi cuties, I hope your New Year has gotten off to a great start no matter what weather you are having... so sorry for those of you in the Boston area..... lots of cold and ice!!

I started embroidering in 1993 when all you could get were designs on (expensive) embroidery cards. So I was rather selective in what I bought and have about a dozen that can still be used in my Brother 190D.
I did not come to the internet until 2007 and Cute was the first site I went to and within a few weeks bought a membership. As I was well into digitising at that time I did not download many freebies. Or so I thought. But after all those years it all adds up.

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by dollygk 08 Jan 2018

And I began embroidering in 2007 after I lost my husband... YES without thinking the designs we collect add up ha ha!

I think we nearly all start out that way until we stitch out a few shockers and realise they're not worth having. That's not to say that all freebies are poorly digitised, equally not all designs we 'purchase' are well digitised. I have edited, especially the mapping, of quite a few purchased designs and swear they are just not worth buying (cheaply), just to save myself from having to digitise them.

I rarely download freebies these days, (except for alphabets which seem to suck me right in, saying: "you need me, come get me"). LOL!

I do love Cute's Alphabets so, despite being able to digitise, I will often choose a Cute letter if I want a Monogram type design.

As for how many designs I have: Far too many to even think of trying to count them.
But I did work out that I have over 20,500 individual letters in alphabets, (only counting 26 letters for each set and not counting the alphabets letters I have digitised myself). WOW! That is really an eyeopener!!!

Time for a cleanup!

I wrote this post over four hours ago but we had a power blackout so all I could do was save it and shut down my laptop before its battery died.

We have had record temperatures here today reaching 41.7* C (108.86*F) in Sydney's western suburbs. I guess we should be grateful the power didn't fail until late afternoon after the sun had lost some of its heat.

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by dollygk 08 Jan 2018

Meganne, when your heat reaches 50 C then tell me about it, we have reached 50 many times here in Jeddah!!
I agree that not all freebie designs are poorly made in fact the designs I had offered free were very well done, they sewed out very well and I've had many Cuties tell me so... nice!
Thanks for your comment...

Not sure, and not sure I want to know.. Will get on top of my filing one day..

I have also saved EVERY snowman design from Charming Station, they are just too cute to ignore and any way one day 'I plan' to make a quilt with those snowmen!!!!

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by marianb 07 Jan 2018

me to..

Congratulations on sorting your designs. Not sure how many I have but like others very quickly stopped spending time downloading and concentrated more on embroidering

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by dollygk 06 Jan 2018

I will look at designs from the better embroidering sites but still may or may not save them!

I don't want to know. Many are are fonts that are in multiple sizes, and single designs in multiple sizes so the number goes up exponentially.

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by dollygk 06 Jan 2018

I do have many font designs and don't know why I save them because I prefer my Embird Font Engine he he

by meganne 07 Jan 2018

So do I Dolly, or I will Manually digitise each letter, in Xpressive, so I will have a font design that I REALLY like. :-)

Hi Dolly. When we first begin machine embroidery we seem to download every available freebie regardless of quality or suitability. Then somewhere along the line we become more selective. I have reached the stage that I rarely save freebies. In the Autumn I spent some time pruning my collection of designs and like many others suspect that I have many designs that I wont ever use but that doesn't matter. Anyone with a subscription here on Cute can quickly add almost 6,000 designs to their collection. And to the question as to how many designs do I have, no idea at all and have better things to do such as embroidering than counting to find out

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by dollygk 06 Jan 2018

I forgot about the alphabets having so many files and even with what I have collected I usually use my Embird Font Engine he he

Like you when I first started I downloaded every free design. Some time back I weeded out all the badly digitized ones and ones I would never use. Hard to say how many I have as I save in 2 formats. I do keep the freebies separate from the one I purchase. Hugs

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by dollygk 06 Jan 2018

Well, even the badly digitized designs can be somewhat fixed... as I do look at each design in Embird Studio before I sew to see if they can be better stitched, there are exceptions like patterns from the better sites!!

I'm not telling because it is not a contest. hehe But all of mine are categorized so I can find what I need in seconds to a few minutes. I gave up on most freebies long ago because I didn't like the quality. So good to know you found a lot of well digitized free designs . Enjoy each and every one of them. Tha's what is important.t

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by dollygk 06 Jan 2018

I had not meant this to be a contest, more like an awakening LOL

Don't ask, don't tell, as we say in the USA.

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by dollygk 06 Jan 2018

Ah..... so you just don't want to know!!

Happy New Year Dolly! I desperately need to weed out designs that I won't use!! It is a great idea!! Hugs, Laura

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by dollygk 06 Jan 2018

When you have no internet it's easy to weed out he he!