How To Save Money with MACHINE EMBROIDERY DESIGNS FREE DOWNLOAD?
Just started in the machine embroidery world? Here is a great article that helps you optimize your costs so you don't have to spend a ton of money and time to make embroidery designs. We cover for you information about where and how to find machine embroidery designs for free, why and when should you use them.
You bought an embroidery machine, supplies, some blanks to start with. Now it's time for you to practice your skills, learn how machine embroidery works.
Where can you find embroidery designs to download for free?
You can find embroidery designs on different platforms, some of the most known are:
How to find the right embroidery designs? How I know the digitizer is doing a great job?
It's very important to know if the designer is doing a great job. A bad digitized embroidery design can ruin your embroidery, especially in the beginning.
1.Check the designer's ratings.
It is the best proof that his/hers designs are quality embroidery patterns. Also look at the images and comments their customers uploaded about those designs.
2. Check for trademark and copyright issues.
All these website are actually platforms that have multiple designers selling their work. But you must be very careful what you purchase. Some designers don't care or don't know about trademark and copyright so this can turn against you.
For example, if you plan on selling baby items, try to stay away from famous cartoon designs because these are copyrighted by Disney or other big companies and if you are discovered by them you can get into big trouble. This is why you will never find cartoon or movie related embroidery designs in Kraftygraphy's store.
Check out Kraftygraphy's free embroidery designs page!
How to find MACHINE EMBROIDERY DESIGNS FOR FREE and how to DOWNLOAD?
After you discovered a designer with designs that suits your needs, you can check on google for their personal website. Most of them have free embroidery designs for you to download for testing and using. Just as we have. We can't upload free designs on Etsy platform but we can do it on our store.
Example: You found on Etsy our store, KraftygraphyEmbroid. You would like to see what freebies we have to offer. Next, go to Google search and type kraftygraphyembroid in the search bar. Search for the website. If we have a website, it should be on the first page. Go to our webpage and search for free designs in our navigation bar. Download what you find and like.
Also platforms such as creativefabrica and designbundles have many free designs that are offered by different designers.
Where and how are you allowed to use the free embroidery files?
Depending on what the shop allows, it can have a personal use or commercial use license. Read the description of the product, you will find information about the license.
Personal license means that you can make items for yourself or gifts but not for sell
Commercial license means you can test, make items for yourself and friends and also sell. Some offer a limited number of use. After reaching that number you need to buy again.
To download free embroidery designs is great for someone who wants to learn how to digitize and how to embroider. This way you can save money because you don't have to pay for designs. And you can test different designs on different fabrics, learn to adjust the tension correctly, how to stabilize correctly because the design construction matters a lot.
When you test, don't ruin blanks, you can use pieces of fabric to test on. With time, if you test enough you will look at the design complexity and the fabric you want to stitch and say " this works best, I'm going to use that needle with that stabilizer". This is how you know you have the skills to start to embroider as a business.
Maybe you thought about investing in an embroidery software. But is that something to take in consideration especially if you are just starting out?
Should I invest in an embroidery software?
If you have the time and some money left to spend, you can purchase an embroidery software. But before that you must know some aspects about making embroidery designs.
#1. Time to learn
Making embroidery designs is not an easy task. You need to have strong embroidery knowlodge about what makes a good design. You need to know what it can be embroidered on, the fabric type so you can choose the right designs type, underlay, density settings and many more details that matter for a good design. And this takes time, because you need to learn and test it.
#2. Level of your computer skills
This is another thing you need to take in consideration. Maybe you don't use computers and you don't know how to operate them, how to use different software and learning to do so can be very hard for someone who doesn't use a computer on daily basis.
#3. Time to create
To create embroidery designs is time consuming. It can take from 10 minutes for a simple name to more hours, depending on your skill level and the complexity of the design.
#4. Trademark and copyright
What is a trademark or a copyright, you might ask.
Well the trademark is when someone has legal rights on word/s. For example "onesie". This is a trademark word for baby bodysuits. You are not allowed to use this on baby bodysuits, not even in your online product description. The owner might not like you using their trademark and will ask for a take down to your platform. And this affects your ranking and sells.
Copyright is the protection of someone's art. This means, that legaly, you cannot copy and trace someone's work and transform it into embroidery. You need to purchase that design in it's form, let's say png file, then convert it into embroidery file for your machine. This takes time and money.
Purchasing already made designs from art creators and transforming their work into embroidery files to sell in digital format is forbiden. You will be infringing their copyrights because you sell in digital form.
If you use that design converted into embroidery files for your physical items you are not infringing because the end product is not a digital file.
With all that being said, you can see that is no easy task to create embroidery designs. This is why, especially in the beginning, ii's better to buy ready made embroidery designs or why not, finding free embroidery designs to use and test until you get your first orders. After that you can look into learning how to digitize or hire someone to digitize for you.
We hope you found this article helpful. If you have questions don't hesitate to ask in the comment section below and subscribe to our newsletter if you want to be notified when we release new articles!
Happy stitching!