Designing for the Brother Embroidery Machine

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To work on your own enbroidery designs to make on the Brother SE600 sewing and embroidery machine, Michael Morris has found success with Inkscape using the Ink/Stitch plugin.

Inkscape is open source freeware with similar functionality to Adobe Illustrator. https://inkscape.org/

The plugin is also freeware available here. https://inkstitch.org/

Ink/Stitch is provided as an all in one setup package from their website. They also have many guides and tutorials on how to use the plugin on their website.

The overall process is pretty user friendly. You just create or import your vector graphic into Inkscape. Use the plug-ins "Clean-Up" function to check for any problematic elements of the image (e.g. tiny patches).  Next generate a realistic preview using the plugin to make sure it appears as expected. Then save the file to your preferred embroidery format in the "Save As" dialog onto a USB drive.

The Brother embroiderer uses ".pes" format which is available in Ink/Stitch. However, it supports about a dozen different embroidery formats for other machines

A few notes learned so far:

  • The max size for the medium embroidery hoop is 4x4. Make sure your image is smaller than that. Larger images are possible, but require some maneuvering. Check youtube for this.
  • Store your ".pes" file at the root of your USB drive for easy access.
  • Text elements created using the Text [T] tool in Illustrator or Inkscape will need to be converted to outlines. Or, you can use the built in text to within Ink/Sketch
  • Be sure to use a sturdy fusible interface on your fabric when embroidering
  • The "Simulator / Realistic" preview will show you how the embroidery machine will proceed
  • To use multiple colors, simply use multiple colors inside of Inkscape; the machine will then pause after thread color changes to allow you to change out the thread
    • To minimize the number of thread changes, select your elements from first to last order in the way you want them to be embroidered. Go to the Ink/Stitch extension menu -> Edit -> select "Re-stack objects in order of selection". For example, if the original thread plan involved 2 thread changes from red -> blue -> red, you could re-select the objects so that there is only 1 thread change needed from red -> blue.
      • This also can be used to minimize the distance of jump threads
  • It's helpful to define the size of your project beforehand and then work from that, since resizing the .pes file could lead to stitch density issues.

The workflow within the machine itself is pretty simple. The manual, which is in the textiles room, gives you step by step instructions. You can preview your design, move it around in the hoop, scale it up or down, and rotate the image.

Helpful Ink/Stitch tutorial series

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