Brian's Blog: Leaping In

Embroidering Around the World!

2011-07-06T15:10:00Z

Gold Coast, Australia was recently the site of one of the largest embroidery conventions ever held, and yours truly was invited once again to be a guest presenter! It was a fun event with over three hundred embroidering 'Delegates' participating each of the three days and nearly four hundred people for the formal Grand Finale. I met friends new and old, and we all enjoyed the process. Some real 'good' came from this too, which I'd like to share with you: Earlier this year, the city of Brisbane and surrounding areas was hit with flooding that affected tens of thousands of people, displacing them from their homes and obliterating many homes and commercial buildings, including some schools. Brother Australia and Echidna Sewing returned one school's sewing program to normalcy by replacing their sewing machines lost in the flood. And they did it with class; they stepped up with sewing and embroidery combination machines. Thirteen other schools were the recipients of sewing/embroidery machines too, showing that some folks are working hard to get the next generation interested in our hobby! Moved by the schools' commitment to sewing and embroidery, several companies, including ours, also kicked in some goodwill with titles and products for these schools. We even got to meet the teachers involved and got them onstage for some well-earned recognition. If any of you Granners know of a school that teaches embroidery, please let us know and we'll investigate if we can help them too.

Home scarcely a week, and I was off to Denver for an embroidery event that had hands-on projects and tons of fun! Thanks to Kate and Patrick for producing a wonderful embroidery experience.

Lately, and only partly due to my travels, I've been realizing what an international family embroiderers have become. There was a single day in the early part of this year that I was in communication with customers or distributors or manufacturers in: USA, Canada, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, China, South Africa, Costa Rica and Australia. This was just a happenstance, but that evening as the final Skype came in from Italy it occurred to me how connected we all are, and I consider myself better for that fact!

Now for my Mac people, I'll let you know what's going on. We've released version 1.6 Embrilliance Essentials. It took awhile to get the Mac App Store to update it, but they are getting faster, and for that we're thankful! Naturally, you can purchase Embrilliance products right here at ATG which means you will get your updates a bit quicker! You will also see a couple more releases in the near future in repsonse to your feature requests. In the latest version, we've repaired all reported glitches, and added a couple new commands, improved the multi-color fonts, and edited some of the fonts to sew even larger. Did you know that some of the Essentials fonts are designed to fill the largest of your hoops?

We are working hard to keep the Windows and Mac versions in sync - but occassionaly it is a challenge. You might be interested to know that we sell about 50/50 Windows and Mac. With the growing popularity of 64 bit systems on Windows, we see that our 64-bit version is being installed on almost half of the Windows systems, which is cool to us and provides a nice speed-up for those Windows 7-64 owners.

Yes, we are looking at OSX Lion, which when released in July will be the final chapter in OSX. Or so we're told. Once the release is final, we'll do an official compatibility update and let everyone know then. Yes, it will be free to our registered customers.

If you're thinking that maybe a Mac is in your future, I'll just remind you that we include licenses for both Windows and Mac with Embrilliance programs, so you won't have to purchase again later.

We also have iPad embroidery apps running, but we're not entirely certain what to release and when. The issue with an iPad is that, as of now, Apple does not have a standardized way to get embroidery designs on and off the iPad with a USB stick. There are some 3rd party solutions, and we're considering them, but Apple tends to one-up those products when they release their own, so we're holding out for Apple to provide a solution to the file issue. In the meantime we're taking suggestions for iPad apps. Also, we'd like to know how many of you are using Android tablets?

For our card-based machine owners, we have begun the task of enabling our Mac side to write embroidery cards. We're not done with it yet, and progress is back-burner because of the relatively small number of you who need that feature, but I know you'll be glad to hear we're on it. If your machine is USB capable or you have a way to write a card for it, let me please remind you that Embrilliance Essentials will resize with stich recalculation, so you can use many of those larger designs too.

The next bit of news is that we're very close to release of some new products including an editor and a digitizer. We recently finished digitizing some font packs for one of our other products and we used our Embrilliance ABC Digitizer on those. While these products are at a state for internal-use only, we think we'll be able to release something this year, finally!

I'm sorry it has been so long since my last post! As you can see, we've been very busy, but I'll try to pop in more often.
Best Regards,
-Brian

Back From the Workshop

2011-01-22T17:28:00Z

Hello, Granners! It has been a while since I've been able to write to you, and I'm sorry about that.

For the last year or so we've been working hard on some new products. But while products are under development I can't really tell you much about what we're doing. For instance, recently we launched our Embrilliance Thumbnailer program. The Embrilliance Thumbnailer provides an easy way for you to view embroidery designs on your Mac and PC.
Mac users may know this technology as a Quick Look Plugin. If you’ve been downloading or buying embroidery designs, you need the Thumbnailer because it's so easy - just open a folder and you can see your embroidery designs. I've been asked many times, so I thought maybe you'd also like the story of how Thumbnailer came to be:

I started this project back in 2000 when I wrote the original Designer's Gallery, but couldn't get it to work, probably because I was developing on Windows 2000, which had a lot of NT in it. Later, XP made it possible, and I had a few friends asking for it, but by then, other folks had done them so I left it alone. They did a reasonable job, and I had no intention of stepping on their toes. I had other programs to write. So I do want to give credit to others for doing this first. Then in 2007 we started writing for the Mac in earnest. Following the successful launch of Convert It, Mac (CIM) in 2008, we saw that this product came naturally, so in 2009 we released it there and made it free to CIM owners. We still had plans for the product sitting on the shelf in 2009 because, having looked around on the Windows side, no one was able to make their icons work completely in Windows Vista, or later Win 7, particularly on the 64 bit machines.

Still, I didn't jump on it until I had a distributor ask for it. They had evaluated what was available for the market and for whatever sundry reasons, usually installation or compatibility issues, they couldn't accept the current product offerings. In a conversation, they simply said, "You know what we need..." And I said, "You know, I have a lot of that done already."

It has been very well received, and we are so grateful! And we're still working on it some more; We've just about got it working to look INSIDE .Zip files. Registered owners can even test the next version by downloading it from the downloads page.

Next I'd like to tell you about Embrilliance Essentials. (Special Introductory Promotion: Buy Now and Get 3 Months Free Anns Club Membership with Brand New Embrilliance Essentials Software)

Every embroiderer needs to do some basic things. Those things should be easy and fun, not an hour long trip to the dealer for a class. And it shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg, either. And just because your computer is a Mac with OSX or a PC with Windows 7 64 doesn’t mean you should be left out! Embroidery software should be easy and fun and useful for everybody. A couple years ago, I was with someone who told me what they like to use in their software. And then I heard the same thing from someone else. And it occurred to me that there are some things which are, "Essential to every embroiderer." Yet many software programs have everything and the kitchen sink too, and they charge you for it. So I put just those things in one simple, inexpensive program, and called it, "Essentials."

What are the Essentials?

Merge embroidery designs in almost any format, even while they are in .ZIPs.
Resize, with stitch recalculation.
Colorize.
Convert Thread Brands on your designs.
Add lettering in Multi-Line, Monogram and Circle modes. You can even spiral text or make really LARGE letters.
12 Fonts included. Others are available. See Essentials Font collection 1 here.
Save in your machine’s format.
Save working files so that you can edit text later.
Overlap designs and have significant understitching removed.
Run a simulator to show how your designs will sew out.
Group/ Ungroup
Change or remove individual colors in a design.
Save in most machine formats (conversion).
Have many chances to Undo your work.
There are special, self-modifying designs that can be used, and some come with the program. These designs calculate their stitches as you play with them for super results!
Intel Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) and later.
Windows XP 32-bit, Windows Vista 32/64, Windows 7 32/64 .
Embrilliance is the only brand in the World that offers embroidery software running native on Mac and Windows 32 and Windows 64 (so it’s faster)!

Here's what the Mac version looks like:

I don't want this to be too much of an ad, and I know it gets that way sometimes. All I can say in defense of that is rather than a large corporation, we're a small team that wouldn't know what else to do with ourselves if we couldn't write embroidery software. We don't golf, fish, or engage in any healthy activities. Writing embroidery code is what we do. And making embroidery easier and more fun is our mission.

We look forward to hearing your feelings about this program. Do you like the idea of its simplicity? It is counter to the 4D/5D or PE-Design for instance, as those try to be all-inclusive. And they are priced that way. There are slice-and-dice editing and file-splitting and conversion programs out there. Some are reasonably priced. But those features didn't feel like things that were, "Eessential to every embroiderer." So after a couple years work, we humbly await your feedback.

Happy Stitching!

-Brian

Leaping in with a Mac, part 2

2010-02-19T21:00:00Z

Leaping In with a Mac part 2

It turns out that a lot of you here at AnnTheGran are Mac users or, dare I say, “Mac curious?” You have seen the ads and heard the talk, but your embroidery stuff runs on Windows, and the kid down the street (nephew, son in law) can keep your system running. Probably: You’re not really sure because you don’t do all that much with it, right? As long as it prints!

Well there’s so much we all can do with computers and most of it is similar between systems. So let me tell you a story. It’s a typical story from a Mac user perspective.

I was away doing an embroidery event a couple years ago. My wife, Tonya, had a nice shiny new Canon digital camera. It was a replacement for a lost one – which was later found – but that’s a story about organization; a later topic. Anyway, Tonya wanted to upload her photos to the PC. There was a program for the old Canon camera on that computer (Windows) but it didn’t work. So she installed the new one that came with the new camera. It got partway through installing and then quit. She was frustrated, but there was a toll-free number on there so instead of ‘bothering’ me, she thought she would work through it with the nice folks that make the camera.

I came home a day or two later and looked at the PC, which was still not working. After listening to the story about her efforts with their customer support and the hours of them trying everything to make it work, I was not surprised by anything but her persistence. She didn’t want me to have to do it for her – she wanted to make it work on her own. Very brave.

After studying what was installed, I discovered there was a glitch in the Microsoft .NET that the program was trying to install. It was hung up permanently and as is typical with things Windows, it was un-uninstallable. They mix things up like vinegar and water and there’s no way out sometimes.

Well, I had been waiting to switch her system out anyway. I held off for a long time because she was comfortable with it and knew how to get what she wanted out of it. But the time had come, so I got her a new MacBook (laptop). A cool one, black in color (the last one they made, unfortunately).

We started the Mac and wondered out loud, “Well they say it just works, let’s test it.” So with not a little fear we plugged in the camera to the USB port on the Mac. Guess what? It popped open a window and showed her camera, then it asked if she wanted to download her pictures. Then it organized them for her and she was able to print with no setup. (In retrospect we were a little bit lucky, but Epson made it so easy. After my last 5 printers, I don’t buy HP anymore. Another story sometime, maybe.)

Since then she has been a happy camper – browsing along with a hundred bookmarks and Safari pages (like Internet Explorer) open everywhere and her email hasn’t been emptied in ages. In short, it’s exactly the way she likes it.

Even relatives and guests who come to stay, as we have small children so there’s always somebody, will grab the Mac and check their email, search the web and print out recipes. We keep the Mac in the kitchen.

Last week my son, Andrew, turned 4. I got him and his mother a Leap Frog program designed to help kids learn. Imagine my surprise that they not only installed it and ran it successfully, but Andrew can now sit down in the kitchen, open it up, drop any Safari pages that are in the way, run his program, type in his name, and play. He still has a little trouble with a mouse, but the Mac has that trackpad and he can swipe his fingers around until he gets what he wants. Prodigy? Well, don’t ask any parent about that, of course they’ll tell you, “Yes.” Really though it’s such a simple thing to work.

And you can too.

Now if you’re one of those folks who has to run Windows programs too, you can. And they can run side-by-side with Mac programs. You do not need to reboot or anything like that. There’s a product called Parallels for Mac. This lets you load windows and run those programs, so you have the best of both worlds. This, in my opinion, makes Mac viable for a lot of people.

Now, why is Mac supposedly easier? Well, I think that some people are wired artistically or creatively or as the book said, “Right Brained.” People who have that inclination, which you are if you are reading this, tend to prefer the Mac. Others, who are more “Left-brained” can use either system and will grumble about each. Here is a pretty way to look at embroidery designs, only available on a Mac. What I can't show you here is the animation that happens as designs "flow" across the top.

Also, there is no doubt that you can get into more trouble with Windows. Pop-ups, viruses and other “Malware” (a real word!) are rampant on the internet and principally target Windows systems. And though Windows 7 is better than its predecessors, I still get “Security updates” nearly every day from Microsoft. So that is the reality in spite of the advertising.

Now, do I use Mac all day? No. I write software mostly for my Windows customers. But I like being different and do have a Mac close at hand.

One more Mac story and then we’ll take a brief look at embroidery software:

I had just released Convert It, Mac with a friendly crowd in Orange County, CA. At the time a brand-spanking-new Baby Lock machine had just come out. None of us had ever seen it. It was the Ellissimo in case you are wondering. Well, again, for the first time, in public with almost a hundred people present, we all held our breath and plugged the Mac into the machine. It showed up immediately as “unknown”. We used CIM to drag and drop some PES files onto the machine and then sewed one out. It was that easy! The same mechanism is how you use machines with USB stick capability. Open Finder or CIM and drag and drop the files onto the USB drive. One of the benefits of having Convert It Mac installed is that it lets you see your embroidery designs right in the Finder. (Mac’s version of Explorer or ‘My Computer’.)

If you are an embroiderer, there are some machines that do not work with Mac unless you have Parallels. For example, the machines that use an embroidery card need a reader/writer or ‘box’ to manage designs on the cards. As of now, there is no software that is native Mac to use those cards, although I will say we have one in the works.

Other machines use a proprietary program to talk with the PC. Some Pfaffs, for instance. Those users too must suffer Windows, but it’s not terribly inconvenient.

Often we get asked about Bernina 730, 830 etc. The Bernina machines are actually EXP based machines. They have been since the 200E. Newer models read EXP+ which adds some color information to the files. Now I know most of you have been told that you need ART format for your Berninas. Actually this is not true, and has never been true. Every version of the software going back to 1.0 had the ability to import other files (including PES) for writing to the machine. See you learned something new.

Another odd one is the older Husqvarna Viking Designer 1 floppy and USB models. You can get a USB floppy drive for about $20 - $30 and connect it to your Mac. Convert It, Mac reads and writes the files needed for those machines too.

Now for all you who are wondering about lettering, merging designs, etc.

All I can say is it is close at hand, and our friends here at AnnTheGran will know ASAP.

Until next time, happy embroidering!

-Brian

Take The Quiz!

2010-01-29T21:30:00Z

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It’s time for some fun. I was recently asked about doing a Facebook application. You know, Facebook, one of the social sites on the internet. Where people who haven’t seen each other can chit chat and generally make a nuisance of themselves. It’s a good way to keep your friends and family close…at a distance, if you know what I mean?

And it occurred to me that one of the popular things people do on Facebook is to make and take personality quizzes. Naturally when I searched, there were no quizzes for embroiderers. Perfect! So here is a quiz for embroiderers. It won’t match you up for romance or tell your fortune, but it compares you to an embroidery stabilizer. Think that sounds weird? Try it for fun! Remember, no wrong answers are possible and all the stabilizers are necessary.

Simply tally your answers with the points listed for each answer. See you at the end!

“Which Stabilizer are You?”

A design calls for specific thread colors. You don’t have them all…

A.) You call around to find who has the right spools, and then get them. 5 points

B.) You figure out the thread conversion possibilities, and then see what you’ve got, and what you’ll need. 4 points

C.) You can find reasonable matches with some thread on hand. 3 points

D.) The colors you have on hand are actually pretty, too. 2 points

A design loses registration, but only slightly. You…

A.) Decide that the design probably had bad digitizing, and you get another one. This time you’ll buy one from a quality digitizer. 5 points

B.) Scrap it and redo it, making sure everything is correct. 4 points

C.) Make use of that stitch remover you paid so dearly for. 3 points

D.) Grab a colored marker. What registration problem? 2 points

In your hoop, you have…

A.) Tear-away with some sprayed-on adhesive. 5 points

B.) Cut-away, with a towel floating on top. You might baste it down. You might add some water-soluble topping. 4 points

C.) Self-adhesive Tear-away, with some sticky part revealed. 3 points

D.) Nothing, it’s a quilt floating on there. 2 points

A needle breaks during a project or a class. You…

A.) Get someone to change it. 5 points

B.) Have no problem with changing a needle. In fact, this provides an opportunity to refresh your memory on how easy it is to do. 4 points

C.) Change it fast while you’re talking. No one would even notice. 3 points

D.) It’s a multi-needle machine, so switch to another color. What an easy feature! 2 points

You walk into a class room full of embroiderers. Then you…

A.) Help everyone get to a seat or get set up so class can start. 5 points

B.) Teach a technique. 4 points

C.) Take a seat with your friends. This is gonna be fun! 3 points

D.) Unload all your show and tell projects. 2 points

Easy, huh? Now that you’ve tallied up your points, let’s see what it says about you, and which stabilizer is most like you!

22-25 points: Cut-Away Stabilizer is most like you!

Your strong constitution and positive outlook holds up no matter how rough the going gets! You take problems and challenges head-on. You can be strong willed at times, but that helps you be a good leader. In the stabilizer world, cut-away is the most needed and most used because of its strength and versatility. There is also a softer side of cut-away called ‘No Show Mesh’ which is perfect for insides of T-shirts and baby stuff. It is really one of my staples because it is so light, yet can hold so many stitches. Another cool feature of this stuff is that it comes in some useful colors, like black and tan. Hmmm, that makes me want a beer!

18-21 points: Press-Away Stabilizer is most like you!

You like to adhere to rules, regulation and structure, but only ones you agree with. You like to do quality work, and you want to do it right the first time! You are careful, cautious, neat, diplomatic and tactful. In the stabilizer world, Press-Away (which disappears with heat) is great for situations requiring a flexible final product, yet water can ruin the finish of the fabric. If you like to embroider on satin fabrics, particularly acetate, this can be for you. Check the temperature on the fabric first, though. This can also be used instead of wash-away for toppings on things like towels. Great for giving a gift that wouldn’t look the same if you were to wash it.

14-17 points: Tear-Away Stabilizer is most like you!

You are calm, relaxed, patient, possessive, predictable, deliberate, stable and consistent. You enjoy a steady pace, and do not like sudden change. In the home embroidery stabilizer world, Tear-Away is the most used stabilizer as it leaves very little of itself behind. There are even ‘Wash-Away Tear-Away’ stabilizers that will remove themselves completely when washed. Tear-Away stabilizers also have a number of varieties of adhesives. There is ‘Sticky’, which has a removable paper backing. Very useful for things that don’t get hooped – you just hoop the stabilizer with the ‘sticky side up’ with the backing on, then remove some of the backing to let your garment stick to it in the hoop. There’s also an easy-to-use ‘Hydro Hold’ which gets sticky only where you moisten it.

10 -13 points: Wash-Away Stabilizer is most like you!

You have a warm, magnetic personality and enjoy working with people. Whether you know it or not, you are a celebrity in any room and people enjoy talking with you. In the stabilizer world, Wash-Away stabilizers are celebrities too because they allow for heirloom lace to be created, they work great as toppings on terry cloth, and can be used to add a little extra holding power to anything that can be washed out. I rely on this stuff heavily when making projects from the Interactives because there is so much you can do with freestanding embroidery.

Well, there you have it, your personality as a stabilizer. And maybe you learned a thing or two about the stabilizers themselves. But I bet you’ll stop and smile for a second or two the next time you grab a roll!

Until next time, happy stabilizing!

-Brian

It's Adorable You!

2009-12-18T19:00:00Z

About 3 years ago I was sitting on my porch looking out across the Puget Sound. John Deer (Adorable Ideas) and his family were visiting with us and we were just enjoying the view of the water and relaxing. It occurred to me to ask him, "If you could ask for any embroidery software feature that doesn't exist today, what might that do?" It didn't take long for him to respond because he'd had the idea but didn't know how to bring it about. "I want to combine printing on a garment and embroidery," he said.

As we talked about it we both realized that we all love the texture and final product that embroidery creates, but embroidery lacks the ability to show 'my grandson' or 'my dog' or 'my photo' in a realistic way on the fabric. And to attempt photo-stitch is tricky, usually disappointing and difficult to pick the threads that are needed to reproduce the colors accurately. Besides if you could print on the garment, your stitching time would go way down when you did add the embroidery.

So if you want to put a picture on a garment how do you do it? There are two easy answers: Printable fabric and Transfer Paper.

Printable fabric is not something from which you make a whole garment, rather it is used to print a photo and then cut out an appliqué. It works great, the image is fairly permanent, and you can actually put the picture of a loved one (or a corporate logo) on an article, even something that's ready-to-wear. If you take a photo, size it and print it out, you can make it an appliqué easily enough: Cut it to a shape and use your sewing machine to stitch it down.

Transfer paper works pretty much the same way, but you need to reverse the image before you print it out. The obvious advantage is that you can then put the image on non-printable things, for instance you can transfer directly to a T-shirt. You could also transfer to a scrap of inexpensive twill for use as an appliqué.

Putting pictures on things is really fun, but the look that you achieve when you add embroidery is simply stunning! The problem is how you put it all together, size it, crop it, add lettering that's the right size, etc.

That's why we created Adorable You!

Adorable You! is a program that imports embroidery designs, sizes them, adds pre-digitized appliqué picture frames and shapes, let's you size and crop your photos into those frames, prints appliqués and transfers (reversed), add lettering and lettered banners, then put the whole thing together into a project that's easy to actually make.

And this is the most fun we've had using our embroidery machines in years.

Our quilter friends have really turned this into something as well. They are combining photos (sometimes even photos of elusive fabric) to make a patch. The patch looks complicated, but it is really a simple printed appliqué or square that's then pieced-in!

AnnTheGran.com has uploaded some videos so you can see how easy it is - please take a look. Whether you use Adorable You! to get the results or just see how to do it yourself, it is my hope that what you'll see inspires you to try the technique.

Happy Holidays!

-Brian

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Leaping In, With a Mac

2009-12-11T19:00:00Z

Hello fellow embroiderers, design seekers and stash collectors!

'Leaping In' begins with a non-PC topic. No, I'm not being Politically in-Correct right out of the gate here at ATG. I'm talking about Mac computers and the lack of embroidery support for them. That other 'PC' will have to wait until we get to know each other!

My wife and I were watching television a couple years ago, and a hilarious ad came on wherein the 'PC' guy was making a fool of himself in his business attire and the Mac guy was just slaying him. At the time I had the Vista thing going, which is to say that my PC wasn't working up to snuff. I'd installed and removed that operating system a couple times, and as of this writing I've removed it from my personal systems at least four times that I can recall. Anyway it occurred to me that if ever there was a time to experiment with the creation of embroidery software for Mac, that time had come. So I did. A friend of mine is a Mac guy, and he happened to be a programmer that used to work for Apple, and I hired him on for the product. In my youth I was an Apple Developer myself, and had that certain affliction that all Apple people have, although I never actually stuck my "Mac '89 = Windows '95" bumper sticker on my car.

So there we were with the tools and the talent. Well actually I bought a used iMac (PowerPC for those who care) so that I had a tool, then we set to work. Now some of you may know me from some other software I make. You could Google me, but it's not necessary because I'll tell you what you wanted to know, which is that my little company can read and write virtually all the embroidery formats for our wonderful home embroidery machines. We usually make software for Windows, but that's another story for a later blog entry.

In the tradition of the hobby, we wrote a cataloging, converting, printing, unzipping, transferring and colorizing tool, but this one's for Mac. I call it Convert It, Mac. As most of you know, there are about a zillion embroidery designs out there. Maybe even a google (with a little 'g'). And they are all zipped up ready for download, and you want to own them. All of them. It's an addiction we all share. I myself go to meetings with other S.A.F.E. members. What's that? Never heard of it? "Seriously Addicted to Free Embroidery"

After some rewiring of my other software we got all those formats working on the Mac. Intel and PPC. OSX version 10.4 and up. Yes it works on Leopard. (I just knew you were wondering.)

Convert It, Mac has an interface that many of you would be familiar with; An outline view of the drives and folders on the left, and a thumbnail view or a table view on the right which shows your designs to you. At the bottom is a detail view which let's you discover more information about a design you have selected. And one nice feature is that you don't have to unzip anything. It's all built in.

There are some nice features such as file conversion which will write so many formats that every machine today can read at least one of them. For Viking Designer 1 owners Convert It, Mac even handles the reading and writing of floppies and USB sticks in your special formats. There's no need for Windows software anymore to use those machines.

Also, you might like to use one of the modern formats such as PES or VP3 which have many, many thread colors available. And Convert It, Mac gives you the ability to colorize the design in your threads when the format supports it. It can even convert a design completely into any thread brand supported by the format. So if you own all the Brand-X Rayon, you can convert those colors in your designs!

Suppose you're going to embroider a towel and you want to put some stabilizer on top of the towel. The Baste function can help by adding a basting stitch to the outside of the design, thus anchoring together your fabric and stabilizer. It's even better than the way some machines do it because the stitching can be adjusted in size so that the design doesn't sew on top of the basting stitch.

And if you're going to use designs that re-use the same color, you may want to Color Sort the design. Color Sort will move color changes so that each color sews the fewest number of times, saving those annoying thread changes. But don't worry, it is intelligent so you won't be messing up the overlapping colors in the design.

At some point in every embroiderer's life they need to actually get the machine stitching. And when you do it's good to have a template which prints out the exact size of the design. This helps you decide if the size and placement of the design is what you really want. Convert It, Mac prints out templates and it can also print out thumbnails of your designs so you can have a handy reference.

When you're ready to use the design, simply drag-and-drop it to your machine or USB stick.

Now here's a fun feature. This is called Cover Flow, and it's a Mac OSX 10.5 feature that allows programs like Convert It, Mac to show you pictures of your designs in the Finder. (For those of you PC's still reading, that's the Mac version of 'My Computer'.)

Convert It, Mac is our first release in a line of Mac products for embroidery. We released it first because it is actually the most necessary for anyone who does embroidery: You need to be able to see and use those designs you been collecting! Now I can hear you already typing, "What about digitizing, lettering and all the other stuff!" Well, it'll come in time. We're working on it. Honestly!

I hope those of you who have Mac enjoy the product!

(But next time maybe we'll talk PC)

Best Regards,
-Brian