Happy New Year and a Renewed Passion!

Happy 2016 everyone! I hope that your year is filled with joy!

My new year is taking back to a long time love--machine embroidery. Actually, it was my husband who encouraged me to move my digitizing to the "Mac" side of life; bless him! I am now the very excited learner of Embrilliance Stitch Artist 3! I hope you will consider joining me on my journey with this amazing software!

Wasting no time, I set about to create my first project, a quilting design:

So, how did I do this? I am a "button pusher" when it comes to software. I jump right in and make my mistakes. (I figure there is "undo" for a reason!) Let's start pushing those buttons!

I clicked on the yellow logo, holding my breath and this is what I saw:

Playing with the track pad, I realized that by hovering over the toggles I could discover their purpose. Ah hah! Found it!

My screen changed, and with it a whole new set of buttons!

My graphic, created in a graphics program was saved as a JPG. Because of its format, I selected the toggle IMAGE, found my graphic in its folder on my computer and selected it. Voila! 

With the image selected and using the black sizing handles, I increased the size of the picture to fill my Janome 8 inch quilting hoop. So far, so good, but this is just a picture, it needs to become stitches! In SA, this is a two step process---drawing a line and assign a type of stitch. 

Drawing a line to this image was super simple! SA is a straight forward digitizing program. It directs you! In the DRAW menu, I selected the MAGIC WAND tool. When the toggle is selected it turns a darker shade of gray.

I first clicked on the outer edge of the black graphic. 

Aha! Look closely---nodes! I tried to click on the inner edge of the black graphic, but only succeeded in duplicating the line already there. So, different strategy--I clicked on the tan side of the inner edge, close to the black design. It worked, I had nodes! 

I tried using the enter key, but would loose my work. Time for manual; super simple solution! Clicking off the image does the trick! (Or does it?) By selecting the IMAGE toggle once again, I could "turn off" the image.

This is what I saw in my hoop:

and in the objects menu:

In order to see all of the parts to my DESIGN, I selected the down arrow next to the number "1". Guess what? Still no stitches! And I have two colors of LINES (I wanted only one color!)

In order to get both lines the same I selected the whole design from the objects menu.

In the COLOR tab, I selected 1 COLOR. The color menu popped open and I could choose the exact color for my design!

One color it was!

But what about those pesky stitches? 

Because I am creating a quilting design, I want to assign straight stitches to all of the lines, so I leave the ENTIRE design selected.

SA tells me which menu to use, so off to the STITCH menu! With the entire design selected, I clicked on the STRAIGHT STITCH toggle.

It worked! It worked! 

I could "see" the stitches because I had selected the EYE in the IMAGE tools.

But, the objects menu also has changed to reveal important information!

The two objects that were lines are now designated as RUN (straight stitch). With the objects selected, the lower menu now states RUN. Selecting RUN (at the star) I can see the specifics of my stitches and make adjustments as necessary! 

The last step is to save! Choose the FILE menu; select SAVE: STITCH and WORKING. 

The stitch file will go to my Janome to be sewn. The working file is the file native to SA; I can edit it without issues at any time.  

 

The dropdown menu reflects my PREFERENCES (set up right after I installed SA!)

 

I know, I have talked about the center of the design! I'll save that for next time! I cannot wait! 

Until then,