One of the most effective and visually pleasing ways to decorate a home is by using embroidery or cross-stitch designs. Each embroidery design is unique and special. Embroidery has its own simplistic beauty that few other decorations can equal. However, while embroidering and cross-stitching by hand can be very satisfying and enjoyable, most people have neither the time nor the patience to accomplish the task. That is the wonderful thing about embroidery digitizing. With embroidery digitizing, people have access to the delightful, "home-made" decorations that enchant the senses without requiring the owner to spend weeks, or even months, placing each and every stitch.
Most people don't realize that their embroidery designs can be put into a computer and then created by a sewing machine. Embroidery digitizing is the process of transferring a picture or group of words into a language a sewing machine can understand. Following the transferring of the image, the sewing machine then stitches the design out, creating a simple piece of artwork in very little time. The actual creation of the embroidery is by far the easiest part of the process.
Embroidery digitizing is not necessarily easy, however. It is actually a rather complex process. For starters, it uses three different types of stitches: running, satin, and fill. These three types of stitches help ensure that the design is transferred from print to picture in the smoothest fashion possible. Transferring a picture to a format a sewing machine can read and duplicate is the hardest part, however. Simply pushing the "transfer" button won't work. Most pictures and images weren't made to be in an embroidered form. Once the transfer is made, someone has to manually change colors, shapes, lines, and many other things to make the design more accessible to the sewing machine. The process of transferring print image to and embroidery pattern can be an exciting challenge for those who are up to it.
When it comes to buying embroidery digitizing, several factors contribute to the actual price. Most people assume that the stitch-count is the most important factor; however, this is not true. The most important factor is in fact the complexity of the pattern. As all by-hand embroiders know, stitching a large shape may take more stitches than the intricate details do, but the large shapes are infinitely easier to complete than the intricate details. The same applies to digitized embroidery. The simpler the picture, the easier it will be to digitized the pattern. Not all images can be transferred to an embroidery pattern though. Embroidery is quite a different form of art than most people are used to, which means that it requires very different types of artwork. An accomplished embroidery digitizer may be able to convert almost anything into an embroidery design, but some images are better left in print. For some images, it may just be easier to simply create a design from scratch that is based on the picture, rather than going through the process of converting the picture directly.
All in all, embroidery digitizing is a wonderful art in and of itself. It most definitely takes less time to create a digitized embroidery piece, but the actual process is significantly more complicated. However, digitized embroidery can create masterpieces that most people could not possibly make by hand.