Do you know that in the past, art had to be hand drawn stitch by stitch before it could be "punched" ?

2010-03-10T08:00:00Z

I think there are not many digitizers left that learned to punch (yes, it really means punching... holes in a card) the hard way.

Before you could even start to punch, you needed to hand draw an amplification of your design. This was very tedious work. Not only you had to use a projector to amplify your design 6 times it's original size, you also had to draw and indicate each single stitch into your drawing. This work was extremely time consuming as you can imagine. In many cases, the artist was a different person than the puncher. The artist however had to know a thing or two about embroidery back then.

He used tools like compass, various types of rulers and hand held wheels with spiky points to *** little holes into the paper. That was needed to be able to determine densities for satin and fill stitches.

Below you can see a couple of images showing an example of a typical enlarged drawing, a portion of it for the fill area and also a picture showing some of the spiky handhel wheels.

Ah, not to forget, in those days prices per 1000 stitches were around US$ 50.- to US$ 60.-

Digitizing for beginners can be quite overwhelming, don't panic

2010-03-04T08:21:00Z

I realize that what is a routine for experienced digitizers, can be quite overwhelming for newcomers. Digitizing is an art, like painting a picture. There are flexible rules you can apply, important is that you start your work in a smart way.

One of the very basic procedures is to just plan your punching ahead by sequencing your color changes in a logical and rational way, whenever possible. Avoid repeating unnecessary color changes.

Run your design through your head first before you start to digitize.

Have a look at the image showing the full design/logo and the individual color changes with the suggested sequence from 1 to 6. Therefore, rule number one is: Plan your strategy ahead !

Roland's Blog

Do you know that in the past, art had to be hand drawn stitch by stitch before it could be "punched" ?

Digitizing for beginners can be quite overwhelming, don't panic