After a number of requests,today I wish to talk about sending your embroidery designs from your computer to your sewing machines.
It is a good idea to have some folders on your computer, with the main one being "My Embroidery Designs" or some other folder you would like. an easy way to start is to go to your desktop and right click,a drop down list comes up, go across to "New Folder" and left click, a new folder will be shown with an area underneath called "New folder".Left click on this area and type in the new name for your folder and press enter.You can save designs directly to that or you can go into that folder and make many new folders to store your designs in with names such as Florals, Laces, Redwork etc. I recommend that you do not leave that folder on your desktop as it starts to get big as it will slow down your computer.Later, when you are used to it you can "Drag and Drop" it into your "Program Files" folder in your "Computer". I use an Iconiser Program called Embird.(www.embird.com) This stores all my designs but also shows me thumbnail pictures of every design, which is great when I am looking for a particular design to sew.
Firstly, there are a number of different media that you can use. Some sewing machines have
the facility to read a cd which is placed directly into the machine or to an external cd drive which came with the machine.( My Bernina 200E, has an external cd drive which is plugged into the sewing machine).
Some older embroidery machines use floppy discs and these work basically the same as the cd,plugged straight into the drive on the side of the sewing machine.Other machines have their own "card" which is read by that brand of machine only.Some machines have various adaptors and boxes that your card has to be plugged into. I used to have a Janome 10,000 and I used their card inside an adaptor which was plugged into my computer. With some older machines, including my Janome,designs have to be put into special folders which are placed on your flash drive( also known as a memory stick).That machine will not read any single design but instead will open each folder and look into it for designs.Read your paperwork to see how your model of machine transfers data.
The latest modern machines mostly all use flash drives(memory sticks). These are really just miniature hard drives, some are even capable of having a program on ,which can be used in any computer it is plugged into. Keep in mind that ALL electronic items fail eventually. Never store designs or information on a flash drive unless you have already backed it up to a file on your computer or a spare external drive. I have an extrnal drive which I back my computer up to constantly, especially if I have just done a lot of work on the computer. I keep this drive in a seperate place to my computer and in fact, I take it with me if I am going away. I have even been known to leave a copy at a friends or relatives place for safekeeping. You can NEVER be too parenoid about losing your designs. Remember they cost a lot of money and you could never replace the ones that you have bought over many years, especially if you bought them via a computer download online.
My Husqvarna Viking Designer 1 machine requires certain VFD folders to be on the flash drive before it can be read by my sewing machine.These files have to be saved firstly in Disc Manager, a free program that comes with the machine, and then exported to the flash drive by pressing the arrow that says "Write to Stick:".The paperwork that came with that program is really self explanatory.
My Bernina 200E only works with some flash drives, so I found if I put just one design on it, in the
right format (Pes or Art or Exp) it will be "tricked" into thinking it is a Bernina item.
Flash Drives have a capacity and you will find that any that are over 1Gb will probably not work in your sewing machine,. The manufacturers will hopefully change this in the near future as small flash drives are becoming very rare to purchase,. I recently had to buy 2 of 512mb capacity from America via Ebay, as I could find none smaller than 1GB in Australia.
So, to sum up, depending on your brand of sewing machine and also on the type of program you have on your computer to manage your designs, there will be various ways to get the designs to your sewing machine.The easiest way, if you have no programs is to highlight the design with a left click on your computer, then Edit,"Copy", go to your "Computer" section, look for your external flash drive, could be "E" or "F" or "G", depending what you have plugged in, and then highlight that drive and right click and "paste".
Remember "C" drive is usually your computers main hard drive, "D" will be your cd or dvd drive, and letters following will be other drives you have plugged in, which could be an external backup drive or your flash drive. I have a small portable hub which has 7 USB ports that I plug things into, like my cordless mouse etc, so I always have to check to see what drive my flash drive is showing as.
When transferring your designs remember to either write down or print out the colour lists. Some machines like the Brother have a wonderful menu to change the colours to suit you at the sewing machine.Others like my Designer 1, which is a few years old, really cant change colours much at all, and you really cant see which part is sewing in which colour, like you can with the Brother.
Lastly, never remove your flash drive from your computer without doing the 'Safely Remove" procedure. You dont want to ruin your drive or the designs on it.
Happy Sewing and if you should have any further questions please do not hesitate to click through to my website and use the "Contact Us" tab to send me an email.
Best wishes
Jennine
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