Turn an image into artwork for embroidery

An embroidery machine reads neither pictures nor vectors. It reads a stitch file: PES for Brother, DST for Tajima, JEF for Janome, VP3 for Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff. A stitch file is a list of needle moves and thread changes (EduTechWiki), and a DST doesn't even store colours.

Tracer doesn't write stitch files. Turning shapes into stitches is called digitizing, and it takes embroidery software: for every shape you decide whether it's a satin column, a fill or a running stitch, with what underlay and how much pull compensation. Tracer does the step before that. It gives you clean vector shapes to digitize from, instead of a picture.

Clean shapes, few colours. Hatch asks for "a simple, clear image, few colors, not shaded colors, and crisp outlines" (Hatch), and Wilcom warns that bitmaps bring pixelation and outlines blurred by anti-aliasing. A vector has neither, but it can't add detail the image didn't have.

No crumbs. Every speck in a trace is an object your software has to stitch or skip. Ink/Stitch notes that auto tracing "often creates tiny or fragmented objects that do not work well for embroidery" (Ink/Stitch), and a trace from Tracer can have them too. Delete them before you digitize; in Ink/Stitch, Troubleshoot › Cleanup document does it.

Detail the needle can make. Ink/Stitch recommends satin columns wider than 1mm, and says lowercase text under 4mm high is hard to stitch cleanly. Look at the artwork at its sewn size, not at screen size.

Tracer exports SVG and, on Pro, DXF, EPS and PDF. What each program imports as vector artwork:

Sources: Ink/Stitch, Embrilliance, Hatch, Wilcom, Brother.

A DXF is one colour. Tracer writes it from a one-colour trace, with every shape on one layer and no thread colours. A colour trace downloads as SVG, EPS or PDF instead.

Tracer's colour styles split the image into four bands of brightness and fill each band with the image's own colour for it. Colours of similar brightness land in the same band: a red and a blue of about the same lightness come back as one colour. In Ink/Stitch, a colour change from one object to the next is a thread change. Three things to fix first:

• —It is always four layers. A design in two or three colours comes back with near copies among the four, and each one would be another thread change. Delete the ones you don't need.
• —The layers are stacked. The lightest layer covers the whole design, and each darker one sits on top of it. Digitized as they are, the fills stitch over one another, and overlapping dense stitch areas make the embroidery stiff. Take each upper shape out of the one below it in your vector editor first.
• —Every layer has an outline. Each shape carries a thin stroke in its own colour, which closes hairline gaps on screen. Ink/Stitch makes a running stitch from a path with a stroke colour, so remove the strokes unless you want an outline stitched around every shape.

• —Stabilizer by fabric. Sulky's rule of thumb: tear-away for a woven fabric, cut-away for a knit or stretch one.
• —Underlay first. Underlay stitches give the top stitches "rails" to sit on, so the fabric doesn't show through.
• —Allow for pull. "Satin stitches pull the fabric together, resulting in a column narrower than you draw" (Ink/Stitch). That's what pull compensation in your software is for.
• —Fit the hoop. Hoop sizes depend on the machine; a small one is 10 x 10cm. Size the artwork to the hoop before you digitize, not after.

• —Stitching the background. A one-colour trace of an image with a white or coloured background keeps a rectangle in that colour, and your software stitches it as a fill. Turn on Remove background before downloading.
• —Digitizing from the JPG. Blurred, pixelated edges make blurred, stepped stitch outlines. Digitize from the traced shapes instead.
• —Stacked fills. Four layers stitched one over another make a stiff patch. Cut each colour out of the one below first.
• —Detail too small to sew. Satin columns under 1mm and small lowercase lettering don't stitch cleanly. Simplify, or make the design bigger.
• —Trusting auto-digitizing blindly. Wilcom says its quality depends on the artwork. Check every object's stitch type before you stitch out.