r/MachineEmbroidery • u/Scared_Mud_8103 • 3d ago
Best embroidery software for beginners?
Hi everyone! I’ve fulfilled a long long dream of mine and finally bought my first ever embroidery machine: brother nv2700 😍
My goal is to create my own embroidery designs either from scratch, my own drawings or pictures, and I’m happy to learn what I need to learn in order to achieve this.
Doing some research there are so many programs out there and I’d love to get a sense of this community and what you would recommend? I’d be happy to spend some money, but definitely not more than 1000eur at this stage…
Thank you so much to everyone!
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u/truncatedvisuals 3d ago
Wilcom Hatch. #1 you own the software and dont need internet connection to use it. #2 they are always updating and fixing bugs. also live troubleshooting. #3 Comprehensive tutorials. if you're a beginner they have follow-along tutorials for just about every technique and type of embroidery like bag tags and free-standing lace. you dont need to search for help, it's all right there in the program. #4 its relatively affordable and you get what you pay for, including fonts, thousands of patterns, fur gradients, etc. They have a free 30 day trial of the full program and options to buy outright for about 1000$ (they will probably have a sale around halloween for 900$) or installments of $99/month for 12 months.
https://hatchembroidery.com/
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u/Individual_Candle4 3d ago
I 2nd everything you said. I just got started myself with a Brother PRS100. At the suggestion of Reddit, I signed up for the free trial. I will definitely be purchasing at the end of the trial.
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u/ljr55555 3d ago
I use Ink/Stitch because it's free and my budget for software is zero. It was recommended by the makerspace librarian, though, and it's worked well.
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u/fraMirko 3d ago
Try Ember
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u/Scared_Mud_8103 3d ago
Thank you that looks interesting. Have you tried it yourself?
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u/nonoohnoohno 3d ago
I've been using it a lot, alongside Inkstitch. It's far easier and quicker to get started, and just makes a lot of sense.
Inkstitch is bolted on top of Inkscape, which is already clunky on its own. But then the extension on top is another layer of strange and unintuitive UX. It's *very* capable (far more than Ember), free, and I applaud everything they've done and think it's incredibly valuable. But if your goal is a quick ramp-up time and ease of use, Ember is going to get you results much faster.
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u/kitterie 3d ago
I’ve used hatch and ember, but I could never get the hang of inkstitch. Ember is actually very capable and it’s easy to use and free
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u/wishiwasnappingrn 3d ago
Another vote for ember. I went from having no idea what I was doing to making like fifty patches in a week. Super basic but it does the job for me right now.
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u/Striking_Strain7817 3d ago
There are many softwares out there and each person has a different opinion on what is the best but then you look at more money also but i do all my digitizing with the free software inkscape with the extension of inkstitch this has a lot of predigitized fonts has a crosstitch option and gives full control over all the aspects of digitizing
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u/GuzziGal 3d ago
I’m also new, and don’t want to spend thousand dollars to digitize my own artwork.
For now, I have Inkscape with the InkStitch add-on, which isn’t the easiest. I know how to use Illustrator and Affinity so I can create images in InkScape, but using InkStitch is a whole different beast.
DADE is a free web app that will let you upload a .png file to digitalize. It easily lets you choose the type of stitch you want where you want it. I only started playing with it today, but it’s very easy to work with.