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Making Digitizing Easier

Sun in Florida - Shade in Holland (quick and easy project)

Only a couple of weeks to go before I meet you all at the Community Circle Event in Orlando Florida. I will meet you all, right? You just have to come: in two days you will learn more than you could learn in two years on your own. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then lecture demos are worth a thousand books!

I can hardly wait to fly to sunny Florida. And waiting for that sun here in the grey, misty and snowy Holland, I thought up a quick and easy project: a lamp shade.

Instead of blogging away here, I will just let the photos do most of the talking for this "craft" project:


Rose and pattern piece in Pre-Design Studio

Start in Pre-Design Studio and draw a flower, swirls, spirals, border scalops, anything you like.
Resize so it will fit the hoop you are going to use (I used my clamp hoop 100x180 mm - 4x7 inch).
I made two drawings, one including the pattern piece of the lamp shade and another one with just the rose to embroider.


Choose menu File > Convert to Stitches, use the settings shown below:

Rose only - convert to stitches

Save the resulting DST on a USB thumb drive and insert it into your embroidery machine.

If you have the clamp hoop, just put the coverboard sheet between top and bottom hoop and close the hoop. For other hoops: cut the plastic material in exactly the shape of the inner hoop and just lay it inside that inner hoop.

Embroider the DST design: no top or bobbin thread. Use a needle size 100/16. IMPORTANT: hold the start button of your machine to stitch the design at a real low speed of 1 stitch per second. That way you get perfect holes:

Hold start button and sew at low speed

Print the design from Pre-Design Studio, and use as a pattern to cut the plastic shade pieces:

use the print out to cut the pattern pieces

Punch holes in the sides:

Punch holes in the sides

Sew the pieces together (yes, by hand) with a big decorative chain stitch:

Sew pieces together

A little extra light, to brighten the days until we're in Florida

Shade in Holland

Done! I'm all set to start making notes for the next project in my little Moleskine notebook.

On to the next project

 

See you soon!

 

Loes

 

P.S. with all these crazy projects I am making these days, I hope you do know that Pre-Design Studio is meant to create artwork for embroidery digitizing software, don't you?

In my next blog I will make a mini tutorial how to use my Pre-Design Studio and Brother's PE-Design Lite together - the two programs are a match made in heaven. Together with Pre-Design Studio, PE-Design Lite can do things it normally can't. I will show this in detail in Florida as well. 

 

Only published comments... Feb 06 2009, 11:15 by Loes
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Comments

 

pat71896 said:

This project is great!  I cannot wait to hear more about digitizing.

You are so right about in person demonstratons, they will teach us so much.  I cannot wait to meet you in Florida.

Pat

February 6, 2009 12:28 PM
 

Loes said:

Hi Pat,

I am looking forward to meeting you too! My first goal is to make everyone at the Community Circle happy with their digitizing software with lots of exciting ideas. My second goal is to turn you into a digitizer :)

Loes

February 6, 2009 12:58 PM
 

Loes said:

Oh one important thing I forgot to add (thanks Kathleen for pointing that out to me):

as the coverboard is made of PVC it's a good idea to use a low wattage bulb to be sure it doesn't get too hot. Also be sure that the bulb is not touching the shade.

Loes

February 6, 2009 4:52 PM
 

g_robb53 said:

Wonderful project - thank you!

February 7, 2009 11:17

About Loes

Loes van der Heijden is the owner of Artistitch.com, the Netherlands, writer of various video tutorials for embroidery digitizing software and developer of the easy to use vector drawing program for embroiderers and longarm quilters Pre-Design Studio.

Here's her story:


Back in 1990 I bought my first embroidery machine. At that time I couldn't imagine that it would change our lives, turning me into a teacher, writer, webmaster, program developer, world traveler, and now blogger at AnnTheGran.com...


When in 1996 the first version of PE-Design was released, I was in heaven! I started teaching PE-Design classes for my dealer and turned my class handouts into my first book. It was the start of our company Artistitch. The comments from my students "you make digitizing so easy" has become our company motto.


In 1999 I wrote a Workbook for version 2 of PE-Design and combined it with movies on the CD where users could see the chapters of the Workbook come to life.
As I was the first one ever to use movies in an embroidery digitizing tutorial, it was an instant hit. My husband Theo and I were invited to many embroidery retreats in the USA, where we met many wonderful people, and made very dear friends. Meeting Ann(TheGran) and Bill in person was amazing. Every year the four of us travel together in our spring vacation: Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, Canada - there's still a lot to travel and also still a lot of photos to be scrapped by Ann .


In 2001, we developed and launched our easy-to-use vector drawing program for embroiderers, called Pre-Design, which made digitizing easier again.


Now, almost 12.5 years later, I am working on my 13th publication, my PE-Design 8 CD-Book and we just released our new Pre-Design Studio program, not only suitable for embroidery digitizers, but also for  longarm quilters, and a great help for garment pattern designers too. My husband has meanwhile retired from a 27 years career at IBM and is now working for Artistitch as well. Spring 2009 we will be in the USA again, for another teaching trip.

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