Drawing to embroidery file
Turn a drawing into a machine embroidery file — free, in the browser, nothing to install.
Start freeWhat to know about starting from a drawing
A hand drawing or line sketch is a good candidate, but usually not as a fill: it is lines, and lines want to be stitched as lines.
How to convert Drawing to embroidery file
- Upload your drawing. Scan or photograph it flat with even light, then use outline mode rather than the standard fill conversion — it traces the centreline of each stroke and sews it as a single running stitch line, which is what a drawing actually looks like in thread.
- Set the finished size. Work in millimetres and set it before you judge anything else — every decision about detail depends on how big the design will be. Detail that survives at 150mm disappears at 60mm.
- Reduce the colours. Each colour is a thread change on the machine. Pick the fewest that still read as your artwork.
- Check the preview, then export. The stitch preview plays the design in the order the machine will sew it, so you can catch problems before there is thread in the hoop.
Which format does your machine need?
| Format | Machines | Stores colours? |
|---|---|---|
| PES | Brother and Baby Lock | Yes |
| DST | Tajima and most industrial multi-needle machines | No |
| JEF | Janome and Elna | Yes |
| SEW | older Janome machines — Memory Craft 5700, 8000 and 9000 | Yes |
| EXP | Melco and Bernina | No |
| VP3 | Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff | Yes |
| XXX | Singer and Compucon | Yes |
Not sure? Your machine's manual lists the formats it loads from a USB stick, and the format comparison explains what each one stores.
What makes the difference to the result
Digitizing is not tracing. The converter decides how each region gets filled, which direction the stitches run, where the underlay goes and how much to compensate for the fabric pulling the design in as it sews. Those decisions are what separate a design that stitches cleanly from one that puckers, gaps at the edges or takes twice as long as it should.
- Size before everything. A shape narrower than about 1.2mm cannot be stitched as its own satin column; it has to be widened or dropped.
- Fewer colours, better result. Every extra colour is a thread change, a trim and a chance for registration to drift.
- Flat beats subtle. Gradients, glows and soft shadows have no equivalent in thread and become banding.
- Check the stitch order. The simulator plays it back so you can see the sequence before you sew it.
Already have the vector?
If whoever designed the artwork can send you the SVG, AI, EPS or PDF, use that instead. Converting from vector skips the whole business of inferring edges from pixels, and the difference is visible in the finished stitch-out. See SVG to embroidery.
Related converters
Already have an embroidery file in the wrong format? That is a different job — no digitizing needed, just a re-encode. Use the embroidery file converter. Working with text rather than artwork? Browse the embroidery fonts.