The other day I was flipping through the latest issue of "Costco Connection" and I saw that there was a sale on for the Brother HE-240 Sewing Embroidery machine. I'd dabbled with Embroidery before, briefly, and it was something I was interested in exploring further. So I ordered it and it came a week later:

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The first thing I stitched was the file I had professionally "digitized" in China a few years ago. It turned out way better than I expected:




Next, I tried my hand at doing my own digitizing. It turns out there's not a lot of really good digitizing software out there, unless you want to spend thousands of dollars. But why can't you just use Illustrator or something? Because embroidery is about where the threads will go -- you need more information than just lines, shapes, and colors. You need to break the design down into actual stitch instructions, and that's tough.



A friend wanted the Subaru STI logo on his shirt:


The Ford Shelby logo for another friend:


Everyone loves Trollface!


And the one on the left here is my most recent digitization attempt -- pretty good, except the eyes kinda got lost under the other stitches.

I still have a lot to learn.