Lesson learned! Love Chris

Lesson well learned!!!!!. It pays to listen to the more seasoned embroiderers. LOL. Hugs Marg

Lesson learned and passed on. THANKS

Well....no more than 20% is what "some" say for resizing...and it depends upon how the design was digitized to begin with...and it also depends upon your having the ability to adjust the density of the design when reducing the size...lots of factors come into play here...the 20% rule is a guideline...but I have reduced some designs by more than 20% with great success...

I have to say that from my experiences I agree with dragonflyer

When I decrease a design my software lowers the stitch count proportionately. If I increase it adds stitches proportionately. I think it depends on which software is used as some do not adjust stitch count.

SQ

If you hadn't tried, you wouldn't learn. So good for you to try it to see if it worked. Yes, you need to be careful about the density when you decrease the size. Be sure to know how to use your software when increasing and decreasing to be sure the density is OK when changing the size of any design..

Dragonflyer is quite correct about the way a design is digitised being an important factor to successful resizing.

When a design is digitised, usually in a DIGITISING module of a program, it is usually created in segments which are very close together, often overlapping. (Yeah we all know that!)

But a digitiser will, more likely than not, use different fill stitches, different techniques, different underlay stitches, different pull compensation, different stitch angles and even different densities for each segment and this is all done in a DIGITISING format, which is not the same as an embroidery MACHINE format, ie: hus, pes, jef, etc.

In most cases, the digitised design then has to be converted from the program's DIGITISING format to one (or all) of the different embroidery MACHINE formats.

So is it any wonder that resizing the finished design, in an EDITING module of a program, is such a hit or miss exercise.

Hey but don't get me wrong, even I will attempt a resize before I resort to de-constructing a design and re-digitising it to get a smaller or larger size. (for my own use of course and only if the size I want is definitely not available to buy. (before someone jumps down my throat)

Hope some of this chatter is informative.
hugs n roses, Meganne (Melide Menschen Designs)

You never know until you try, then you don't have to make that mistake twice.. Marian

Thank you sooooo much for putting this up, I too have done this, and didn't know what I had done wrong, I am only new to machine embroidery, and that knotted mess (Birds nest ) was appearing a lot on my pieces and they would end up in the dust bin, NOW I KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING, !!!! I have now slapped my wrists and have learned a great lesson, thanks heaps, this site is so great.

been there.. done that too....

Never tried to change the size of a design - too scared!!! Thank you all for your input

At first, I was afraid to resize designs. As I got more experienced and got to know my software better, I'm more confident about doing it. With some digitizers, I never have any problem. With others, resizing is a problem. After a while, you get to know whose designs will resize well Always good to do a test stitchout.

When I resize one of my own designs I always do it to the design file and never the embroidery file. The reason is given by meganne further down. But even then it is not as straight forward as you think. There usually is a reason why a digitiser decides on a certain size. Enlarging a design not only enlarges the overall design, it also enlarges the tiny errors and irregularities. But that does not mean that you'd better digitise as large as possible and then downsize - small details become mini-objects consisting of too many stitches in a the same spot. Satin stitch columns become too narrow to stitch out nicely. Actually, it is surprising that you can resize at all with good results when it is more than ten to twenty percent.