Border pattern, make one freehand

A Freehand border pattern is personal

This post will be about creating a freehand border pattern.  Part of the fun of embroidery digitizing can be in making things that look like the are done by hand.  This personal touch can get you praise from your friends and customers!

Sometimes perfection in machine embroidery is a disadvantage.  You might want to make something instead that looks like it was hand done.  To maximize the hand done effect first draw your own border pattern using a pencil and paper.  Play around with it until you got a pattern that you like.

In the example below I drew a freehand quilting border.  I drew some guidelines to help me keep things roughly even.  I know it looks messy but that is the whole point of doing this.

Once you have your hand drawn border pattern take a photo of it and save it to your computer.  You can then copy it from your favorite image editing program, and paste it into EmbroideryWare using either “Ctrl+V for paste” or choose “Paste in same location” from the edit menu.

Set image opacity and size your border pattern

Once the image is in your document change the opacity of the image to a lower value.  I like using 0.5 (i.e. 50 percent transmission) for my work.

Next you will size the object to the approximate size you want your border to be.  I use the “quick edit box” for this and adjust the corners of the image until I get what I want.  In this case I want a border 1 inch in height.

Drawing your border with a defined stitch length

The next steps are going to be more precise.  We are going the use the “Stitch Length” marker feature of EmbroideryWare to set our stitches precisely.  First we need to decide what stitch length makes sense for your project.  Bigger stitches look more hand done, 3 millimeters is a good choice.  To set this go to the hoops menu and choose a metric hoop.  Then you can enter 3 under “Stitch Distance Guide Marker”.

Once you got the distance set turn the marker on under the show hide menu.

Choose the line tool and snap your first point at zero.  Next turn on the “Snap to distance marker”  on.

Now ever time you click along you pattern a point will be placed exactly 3mm from the previous one.  Continue clicking until the enter pattern is traced.  Try to locate your last point as close as you can to zero in the y axis.

Next we are going to precisely set the last point to zero in Y by opening the point editor and choose the last point, enter zero for y and press “Update”

We are now ready to turn this border into a stitch pattern but first set the stitch type to “AsDrawnSingle”.  Then do “Copy Stitches” and “paste to a stitch pattern file”.

Have fun with your new stitch pattern

Then we have a new stitch pattern we can use for a border or a motif fill etc.  Below are examples of both.  Try it out and have fun.