Ann The Gran Community

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.