DG Creator - Digitizing with Satin Border Tool (Stitchartist too!)

[Music] everybody it's Brad today we're going to be digitizing in creator we're going to draw a complex logo with satin border stitches so this exercise is going to be all about passing and deciding how to best approach a what appears to be at first glance a pretty complex looking design so I will put this I'll put a download link to this file in the description of the video or if you're in the class it'll be on your CD but so that everybody can follow along with me with this but this logo is somebody bought embroidery machine from us and they wanted their logo digitized and I said well ok but I'm gonna use it for a video so here it is anyway um open up your designers gallery creator program and you're gonna left click on the create icon here it says create designs left click on that and depending on what version of creator you have you will see a more or less well I guess you won't have more because this is level 3 but you'll have this many or less icons across the top here I'm going to set this to be in creator level 3 but if you have level 1 it'll look like this if you have level 2 it'll look like this and notice the icons that were there before are still there there's just more and then level 3 you you will look like this ok so there's some there's some stuff that I'm gonna do in here and I'll tell you when if if you have to have level 2 or 3 to be able to do the things that I want to do I'll tell you for the vast majority of this and to make it look fine you can have level one but anyway so click on the image icon which is over on your left hand side just left click on that and navigate to where the logo is on your computer that you've downloaded mine's in my digitizing images logos for creator folder yours will probably be in your downloads folder if you downloaded it over the Internet anyway I'm going to go ahead and click open ok and we can see that we've got the the logo is right here and I am going to I'm not actually gonna resize this because the size that this is is actually a little bit bigger than the customer wants it so I'm gonna leave this at the default size and I've got my grid set to be one inch square so each one of these is one inch so I can kind of tell just at a glance that this is about about three inches wide the logo part of it not you guy you can't count by the the white space but anyway so you know that's the they're gonna so this out on like ballerina outfits or something so that's it's gonna have to eventually be a little bit smaller than that I'm gonna digitize it at this size which would be the appropriate size for like left chest the left chest embroidery but anyway let's go ahead and start looking at this thing so we've got tons of lines and they're overlapping and this looks like this looks this looks like it would be pretty hard to figure out how to go about digitizing it and in what order but if you if you just think about the steps involved before you start tackling the design you want to look at it and kind of make a plan okay so I'm gonna say that we want to start on one of the Swans heads so we want the machine to start sewing say here and then we'll have it so down around here I'm gonna skip over this filled it in area because I think I can get away with doing this is one of the last steps so we're gonna sew here to here and then maybe have a Travel stitch too here and then go around this curve and I'm gonna do this with a satin border stitch the whole time the whole design is gonna be sadden border stitches so let's see we go around this way or maybe not you know what now that I'm looking at it I'm thinking maybe I want to do this one because look how this one comes down and then ends here whereas this one kind of goes and if you follow this line this line is really long goes all the way around the whole thing all the way over to the other head so I'm gonna I'm gonna go so that means I'm gonna start here then and I'm just I haven't digitized this before so this is my process for thinking about this let's see alright so I'm gonna start here we're gonna go to here Travel stitch to here travel down here okay and then we'll stop it here alright and then from there I'm gonna actually you know what yeah yeah okay I see what I'm gonna do I'm gonna travel from here with a running stitch up to here and then down travel down to here and then make a satin stitch go back up along my traveling stitch okay and then we're gonna travel down here same thing go back up and then that way we can do basically the entire inner part and then do this outer part as one continuous line okay so if you don't understand what I just said that's fine what we're gonna do is we're gonna make it so that this thing so Zout in one go with no stops and no cuts so it's not gonna have any jump stitches it's not gonna have any parts where the machine stops and cuts thread that's going to be our our goal for this and like I said we're gonna do this mostly with a satin border stitch so let's get started the first thing we need to do is in the draw section we need to tell the software what type of drawing we're going to do and we're going to choose the first one in the top left draw with points we're going to left-click on that then over here under stitch we've got right now what's selected is artwork with no stitches we're going to just go ahead and directly digitize this by telling it we're gonna do a satin border stitch and then I'm gonna move to the top of the beak here cuz that's where I want this to start we're gonna left click there and then I'm gonna let see well have this see how well this does with just three clicks okay that makes that a nice little curve we can see that the beaks are curved they're not a hard point so that looks okay to me alright so and we can see before I right click to generate this we can see that my start is gonna be here my stop is gonna be here I'm gonna right click with the mouse it generates it and we can see that what we've done is created a satin stitch whose width is way way too wide for this alright so we're gonna go over here and we're gonna adjust our stitch width here we're gonna change it down to about two millimeters and you may say Brad that's way wider then it is on the artwork and that is true but when your digitizing with a satin border stitch you have to understand that it's going to pull the it's going to pull the the fabric when it sews this so you always want your satin border stitch to be quite a bit wider than the artwork that you're trying to trace because it's always going to end up looking much narrower when you sew it out than it does on the screen so just trust me but that that looks ok now as you can see it brought it into the wrong color I'm gonna leave it red for now just so that you guys are gonna be a little more able to see the parts that I've digitized versus the parts that I haven't digitized and then at the end we'll change the color to the correct color so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna travel from the end here and if we want to double check our endpoint if we select our segment we can see the green bow ties are start the red bow ties are stopped so we want to have a stitch that runs from here to here so that there's no jump stitch or the machine doesn't try and cut from when it travels from here to the next segment which like I said is going to be this satin stitch here so we use our draw with points tool again and we use our run tool and we're gonna start at the end of our last one and notice it hides our stitches for us so that they don't get in our way and we're just gonna draw a line from there to there that was with left clicks I right-click now and it puts in this run stitch to here okay and then later we're gonna fill in over top of this so you're not going to see this stitch it's going to get covered up so let's start our next satin segment is going to go from here all the way down to here okay so we select draw with points satin border and then we're gonna start it here left click and then if you click along the curve you'll see that it automatically starts to curve your line for you and if it doesn't do exactly what you want you just hit the backspace key and that goes back now when you have a hard turn like this this type of point that we're about to generate up here is what's called a cusp anytime something looks like the bottom or the top of a heart so like this would be the bottom of a heart this for instance would be the top of a heart down here anytime you see a point that's like that you're going to hold down your Shift key and then click it and that's gonna allow it to turn the other way as we come back down the curve okay now you see i misclicked a little bit there I can either backspace and then do it again or when I'm finished I can right click and then I can move that point to wherever I feel like it needs to be okay now there's another thing that I'm gonna do and that is I don't like having these square ends on my side and border stitches okay it's okay on the bone the beak here but I actually want for these ones because there may be a little bit of space where when I draw in the filled end part here where you can see the square end of this satin and we can actually take care of that I'm gonna select my satin stitch here and we're gonna look for the first well actually we adjusted the width earlier but we're gonna look at this properties again and this icon here adjusts the line and nib Styles if you left click on that we have options for the variable thickness of the width of our of our satin stitch and then the nibs and the nibs are little things that go on at the end of the of the satin stitch and I'm gonna set both of these to be a pointed nib and see what that does is it creates a point where it it draws down the the satin stitch kind of ends in a point instead of in a square so I'm gonna actually move my my endpoint a little bit just by moving my mouse over it it lets me do that so that it kind of lines up with with the line there otherwise it would have been you'd be able to see it overlapping okay and if you want you could set your your beak to do that too I don't think you really need to that does look pretty neat though and it's definitely gonna it's gonna make it so that there's definitely going to be overlap here and no gap when we when we put this this fill in there so let's yeah let's go ahead and do that anyway so what do I say we're gonna go from here to here and then we're gonna travel up here and then down to here and that is because if I if I draw a run stitch to here to travel to this point and then I put in a satin stitch then my stop points down here and I don't have any way to get back to to this side right so what we want to do is we want to go in and use draw with points and the run tool we're gonna draw in our shape and this is what type of point it's a cusp so we have to do what hold down the shift key so we'll hold down shift and boom that lets us turn the corner and come down here I'm just left clicking all right and then I'm gonna right click so I've got my start and my stop so the stitch starts here travels around this way comes back and now we're at this point and now we're going to draw our way back along this line so we're going to use our draw with points we're going to use our satin border we're going to start here right where the stop on the run was and follow along the line till we get to here now we're going to right-click generates that line okay if we want to we can adjust this point so that we're not going to have an exposed area where the where this satin stitch might not cover that totally okay so now we are now where are we at right now we are back where we started that other run stitch from basically and everything that we do along this line is going to get covered back up so you don't have to work too carefully to make sure that your next run stitch doesn't overlap the edge of the satin stitch here because it's gonna get covered up anyway so we're going to start here travel back along this line we're gonna stop about there we're gonna right-click oops oh no nut ups never mind I tricked myself I was like oh no I didn't set it as a satin stitch but we're drawing a travelling stitch not a satin stitch okay so now we've gone from here to here and now we need to bring our satin stitch back the other way that was the whole point of coming down here with a run stitch so we go in and we use our draw with points and we use our satin border tool and then we go ahead and click click click oops backspace if you mess up I'll bring it to about here right click generates my satin stitch and we'll go ahead and line that up the way that I want it okay that's probably good enough and then draw with points and satin border or no run though because we got to go down to the next one which is this one okay right click and then we're going to use draw with points satin border again and we're gonna go back along that line looking good so now what do we do we need to get from where we're at what will what would be the next step here well I would say that what we need to do is the same thing that we just did over here but on the other side so that when we put our our stitch that's gonna go along this whole outer thing it covers up all of that so we can easily get there just by traveling along this line because remember this whole thing this whole thing here is gonna get covered up by a satin stitch so that's what we're gonna do use the draw tool the run tool and we're gonna start drawing our travelling stitch in here and what type of point is this it's a cusp we hold down the shift key boom that lets us come out of that little point looking sharp and we can travel all the way up to here and this actually is a cuss point because I'm going to travel back in here so that was a shift click right on this corner here I'm gonna right click to generate boom and back to the old grind of running back along this line with our satin border tool and then right click it's lovely lovely lovely lovely ok next step is going to be to travel back along here shift-click right click to generate okay so we've traveled up and down now we draw with points satin border bum bum bum bum bum okay that might be a little bit more overlap than I need so we're gonna pull it back just a hair maybe just a little more hair good looks good to me okay so my stop point was right here so we travel back along using the run and the draw with points bump bump and then this is oops that should have been a shift click there shift click and back down okay and then we use our draw with points on our satin border travel back along this guy okay that's pretty good so let's see now what do we do let me think about it so our stop point is currently right here so what we need to do is we need to get to a point where we can draw in the rest of it before because I want the outline thing that that total outline to be the last part of all of this that gets done I know what we could do look if we travel here and we're just basically doing what we did over here in Reverse we travel up here down up along here they don't really even need to travel what we can do is we travel to here we start up a satin stitch here then we can go across to the beak and then down do this fill then the border all the way around the whole thing and that'll end here and then this filling will be done okay cool I've got a plan so our stop point was here we're going to use the draw with points and the run we're gonna go here this is a ship click right there down down stop here and then we're gonna start a satin here here here shift-click here and then travel this isn't a traveling stitch but we're going to just keep clicking around these points remember if you mess up just backspace you're just a backspace away from having it right right click then travel here to here then draw with points satin here here here okay and then we're gonna travel down to here with a run and then we're gonna fill in this area now we can't do this with a satin border okay but I don't want to use a regular fill stitch because the rest of this design is all satin stitches when you've got one fill stitch thrown in with a bunch of satin stitches it doesn't look good so this is where if you've got level three you can do it a little bit better than if you've got level two but so what we're gonna do is we're going to do draw with points and leave it and we're gonna do draw with points and then choose satin column everybody should have sat and call them and then we're gonna draw in the shape so we're just doing the shape of the face here made a little mistake there on my clicking and you're gonna close the shape with this icon here close shape it's this little arrow eating itself left click on that and boom it automatically puts in a column stitch here now if you era let's zoom in on this a little bit if you have level one this is as good as you can do okay but if you look at it up close kind of hard to tell with this color actually but if you look at it up close this I can zoom in some more this has this little weird spot to it and if we have level three then we can select this shape you see how it didn't do my shape exactly right we can select this shape and then hit this icon here add inclinations I can force the stitch direction to go the way that I want it and then I can move it a little bit if I still don't like it there we go and that's probably how I would do it if you have level one though you just kind of have to adjust your your point let me delete this and draw it back in because I don't think oh hey I could just undo yeah but it leaves the inclination and there we go okay so if you're at level one and it's like this and it's not drawing your shape exactly how you drew it with the with the just the second column button see how I move that over and I managed to get it see that looks pretty good okay so it's not that big a deal but um with a larger more complex shape it really really is nice to have that freedom to force this ditch direction the way you want it on a satin column stitch but anyway this is gonna look nice when we saw this out this is this is actually gonna look good so oh let's see we want to see where our starting our stop pointer because on this one it's a oh it's a closed shape not an open shape so it doesn't automatically put the start where I start clicking and the stop where I stop clicking so we want the start so we're gonna grab the bow tied just left click on it and drag it to where the stop was and then we want to take the stop and drag it up to where the start on our next line is going to be okay so that is there so that's all that's all nice now and we are now going to I'm going to zoom out a little bit so I can see what I'm doing a little better now we're gonna just go all along this whole outline all the way along until we get to the top of the other swans head okay so draw with points and satin border and I'm going to start tracing okay this is a shift click here or a cusp got a little off there we've got another shift-click coming up here right here like that okay that's where I'm stopping I'm gonna right click okay and then the last step is gonna be drawing in this this column stitch here so I'm gonna zoom in a little bit and draw with points and satin column ooh yes I should have made that a shift-click if I was gonna make that such a hard turn huh ah two of them when you see that big bold you like that that means you clicked the wrong click alright close my shape there we go alright so I mean I could go back and and edit this so that it looks so that it looks a little bit more perfect just by moving these points around and then I also need to set my start points actually in the right place already the stop point doesn't really matter that much because it's the last it's the last element that shows out so it doesn't need to link up of anything else but and I can go back and move these points around to make it dead perfect but the important part is that this thing is going to sew out in one go exactly right with no stops and no cuts and now that I've got everything I can go in and actually do some editing of the entire thing one of the nice things about this program is if I select everything at once I'll just hit control a will do it or I could have gone up here and clicked on the whole design if you look here we've actually got the properties of every part of our design in groups so this tab here on the property satin border this is all of the elements that are satin borders properties this is all of the elements that are run and then this is all the elements that are set and those are our two satin columns okay so under satin border if we decide you know what this stitch width is not right we can adjust it make it wider make it narrower and it adjusts the entire thing at once if we decide we want all of our nibs to be completely uniform one of them all to be pointed which is how I meant to have it I accidentally left some of them too rounded but I can Ajay I can do that and it sets it for all of them if I want to change the way the line thickness works for the entire design I can so that's really powerful the fact that you can do those things I would just looking at this I would probably move these points and these point this point down a little bit so there's a couple of minor adjustments that I would want to do to this to make it so outright another thing is we've got these a pretty narrow set in stitches here two millimeters is really narrow and we don't need a whole lot of underlay for that so if we look at our underlay settings here we've got by default a zig zag underlay and watch what happens when we go to sow this out I'm going to go up to the stitch simulator here and let it run out a little bit of this design so I click on this and then I click on the play button and we can actually watch it stitch out okay so there's the first part of underlay and then the second part of underlay look at all that that was three passes of underlay more than we need for this okay and I'll watch it really takes a long time if when it does a long one it comes down here look at this okay goes all the way down here all the way back then it's going to do a zigzag all the way down one way all the way back the other way and then it starts to do my satin stitch okay I mean it's gonna take all day to sew this out and it just doesn't need that much underlay for this so what I'm gonna do need to control a I'm gonna select where oh we're out of creator when you're in your stitch simulator you can't edit the property so you have to go back to create anyway so under satin border I'm gonna go here we've got our top stitch the next one over is underlay so we're gonna set underlay we're gonna change it to two just edged run and it'll just do just the contours of it that's that's all we need so that's gonna save us a whole lot of stitches and then under run we could adjust the run types if we wanted our run stitch to be longer or shorter and then under satin we can go in and adjust the properties of these for instance if we made this design really really big and we had a large satin column in here we could go in and have it split that into multiple columns which you need to do if you've got something that's an area that's like around a half an inch or so is about as big as your as your machine will sew out a satin stitch I a little under that you have to actually increase this number here so if you've got a big wide satin column that you've created you need to increase the number of columns so that it doesn't make stitches that are too wide but we don't need to do that for this unless we're gonna blow this up to really big like so that we were going to sew it out on a pillowcase or something like that and then we also want to change the color so we'll select the whole thing go to color and let's make it like a golden color yellow orange that'll work okay and let's go ahead and we'll watch it so out I'm gonna have it do it fast though and there it goes so we can see it just travels all along the whole way no stops no jumps no cuts that's it so it's the same like I see a lot of people trying to digitize like Celtic knots it's the same it's exactly the same process for doing something like that I mean this is almost like a Celtic knot design itself here it's all about just breaking it down and thinking about what order the things need to sew out in and you know knowing how to manipulate your properties a little bit but the important part is figuring out what order to sew things out in and and break it down and think about it section by section and have a plan when you start to digitize like I did I planned out my movements when I did that so anyway that was my first time digitizing that little logo and I think it came out pretty good so I hope this video helps some people and thanks for watching I'll see you the next one

Channel: Brad Martin

Views: 6,584

Keywords: embroidery digitizing, how to digitize, designers gallery creator, embroidery tutorial, stitchartist, stitch artist, how to make embroidery designs, baby lock, babylock

Id: 1ZizwQgHvo8

Length: 32min 27sec (1947 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 25 2017