This morning I was watching sewing on PBS. The show was "Its Sew Easy". Cookie Gaynor was their host. She showed how she liked an element in a fabric design, so she used this little scanner device to scan the design, and then it was ready to be a machine embroidery design. Does anyone know if the scanner digitizes the design and spits out the design, or did she skip a LOT of steps in the middle? I've had no success with digitizing, and am curious about the alternatives. Does this make any sense?

Sorry, didn't see the show, and the links below wanted me to "install" a Magneto, whatever that is, and I won't. I'm running XP, maybe the video needs Windows 7. At any rate, as far as I know, there is no magic way to scan something and have a nicely digitized design pop out. Would be nice magic, but doesn't exist. Most digitizing programs have an "auto digitize" type feature, including my Janome Digitizer Pro, but I've never been happy with what it's done. You have to play sooo much with the original artwork to get the number of colors down & correct that you may as well manually digitize it. And then half the auto digitized stitches are wrong, it doesn't allow for push & pull in the material, etc. Might be ok for some really simple line art, but scanning produces too many colors. What program are you using to try and digitize? Perhaps one of us with the same program could be of help? There's lots of things to understand about digitizing that aren't program-specific, like how to path, compensating for push-pull of stitches, etc. Anyway, I think maybe Cookie did, as you say, skip a LOT of steps in that little demo, whatever it was. Hugs, Marji

2 comments

by justonlyme 07 Jul 2012

I've tried several demo programs. I'm a visual learner, and have to do repetitive actions to get it down. I may have to take a class and then find a mentor. Thank you for your explanation. It makes sense.

by bumblebee 07 Jul 2012

This is preety much what I've heard. I had autopunch when I got my machine and never bothered with it because of all the stuff you mentioned.

It's only a scanner. Many printers have scanning ability. Most scanned images are of such poor quality you cannot auto digitize from them. Once you have a drawing or a scanned image you have to manually digitize the design to end up with something worth while.If I scan in a design, I trace it in a drawing program to get a quality good enough to work with.

1 comment

by justonlyme 07 Jul 2012

That is good to know. I'm not even going to bother looking in to this. Thank you.

I see the scanner mentioned but not how she got from scan to digitized design but the project still can be done with scraps of fabric into the quilted pillow. I believe the link for the template is on the other link.

1 comment

by justonlyme 07 Jul 2012

In the show, she tapped the fabric twice with the scanner and then was able to stitch out a flower from the fabric. Obviously she skipped lots of steps. :)

I google the title show and got this link with a video using the flip pal scanner from brother with
Cookie scanning the fabric. I believe this is what you saw?

1 comment

by justonlyme 07 Jul 2012

That was the device she was using in the show!! I imagine that it costs a pretty penny! Thank you for searching it for me!

I will check back! Interesting discussion. Live Laugh Download Stitch!

Ha! I'd like to know the name of that scanner!

Some fabric designs are copywrited too

It depends. Some autodigitizing software can take simple clipart and autodigitize. Most people are not happy with the results.
With a scanned picture its probably traced in an art program, converted to a usable graphic and then it could be autodigitzed but again with probably not great results
Third, guess trace the design, refine it and convert to a vector file and then manually digitize.
Of course copyright art should not be done this way.
And I think the best design would come from a manually digitized item.
These are my educated guesses but the designers know way more than me and will come along and opine.
But generally speaking its sorta how it could work.

1 comment

by justonlyme 07 Jul 2012

I was skeptical. I've tried auto-digitized designs with marginal success at best.