I just finished stitching out a beautiful fall design. I think it was a free one but they didn't put any underlay stitches and it pull and ruined it. Why would someone go to all the trouble and make a design with no underlay? Maybe I'm missing something here, but doesn't that help to stabilize the design? (12,000+ stitches) As far as the design goes...they did a really nice job. Can I add underlay to this ready made design, or should I just delete it? I have Embird Studio.

I say yes! I have to ask, however if a design is worth the stitches, it is good to have the correct stitches!

Thanks ladies, I will see what I can do with it.

I've got lots of designs that have glitches. I use my digitizing software to fix things all the time!
I think sometimes it's an honest mistake and sometimes it's digitizers using automatic digitizing instead of the "right" way.

I was thinking the same thing Mops suggested. Marjialexa thanks for reminding me that I could use my "virtual sew out" feature...Mnladyus I hope your next stitch out will be success full ;D *2U

I'd follow mops advice if you like the design and want to use it. I have Janome Digitizer Pro, and no matter where the design comes from, I always always put it into Digitizer and look at it carefully before I sew it out on fabric. My program has a "virtual sew out" feature, so I can watch just exactly how it will sew, what order, what the underlay looks like, etc. before I even load it into the machine. Even the best digitizers can have software glitches transferring from the native digitizing format to all the different machine formats. And with freebies gathered from blogs or unknown sites, well, who knows how good the digitizer is, really? If you don't want to test sew, at least have a digital sew out in your software, save yourself some headaches. Best of luck, hugs, Marji

1 comment

by mops 22 Aug 2013

I do the same, always have a look at the virtual sew out, it is not foolproof but most errors are easily detected that way. I even store a few per site in a file called Rubbish, so I know which sites or digitisers to avoid or mistrust.

If you like the design you could make a general underlay - use the colour of your fabric - it does an even better stabilising job than seperate underlays for the different (adjoining) parts. I almost always do one underlay for a leaf that is split in two for different stitch directions and/or different colours.