What is Feng Shui?

Feng Shui is an ancient concept, pronounced in English as “fung shway”. This was known earlier as “Kan-Yu” which means ‘The Law of Heaven and Earth.’ Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese practice of placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment. Feng shui literally translates as “wind-water.”

Feng shui is a discipline with guidelines that are compatible with many techniques of agricultural planning as well as internal furniture arrangements. Weather, Space, astronomy, and geomagnetism are basic components of feng shui. Proponents claim that feng shui has an effect on health, wealth, and personal relationships; critics consider it a pseudoscience.

Check out some of the symbols of Feng Shui at 4-Hobby. One of them is the Chinese gold fish which you see next to this post. Traditionally the Chinese place eight orange or yellow gold fish and one black goldfish in an aquarium to attract money. The number 8 represents prosperity in Feng Shui. The idea too is that if misfortune hits your family, then the ninth black goldfish will die and receive the misfortune instead of you. This cute embroidery can be downloaded in a pes machine embroidery format.

Yin Yang is a fundamental concept which expresses a duality which cannot exist without both parts. The flowers within the Yin-Yang is added as an embroidery effect.

The resource also contains the famous dragons and the chrysanthemum. The Chinese Peony flowers set is well done in the right pinkish red colours. Apart from the flowers, this set also contains the peony basket, peony square and peony circle.

Wish you a great time with Feng Shui embroideries..!

True to its name, here is some seemingly simple but dazzling Unique Embroidery. This website has a selection of close to 180 free embroidery designs and it is growing by the day. Check the leafy petalled flower, elegantly embroidered using 7438 stitches. This is sized at 5.09 by 5.09 inches and is available for free download in ART, DST, EXP, HUS, JEF, PES, VIP, XXX machine embroidery formats. The information on how to convert the files from PC compatible software to your embroidery machine would come in handy and you could read it at PC-Machine formats embroidery.

The second embroidery design that caught my attention is the unique necklace. Using a combination of 2 vibrant colours, the pattern is beautiful. This has 8744 stitches and is sized at 9.36 by 14.41 inches. Both the outer and inner stitches combine to form this unique pattern.

Have you come across any such unique collections in your world of embroidery. You could showcase your designs at All Free Embroidery Designs. Feel free to share!

I thought of treating all of you to some of the best free embroidery design resources available on the web. Check out the first resource at ABC. This contains good quality free machine embroidery designs. Once you register and log in to the website, you can avail of the design formats available in art, pes, hus, pcs, jef, xxx, dst, exp, shv, vip and sew formats. For more information on these formats, reach out at PC Machine embroidery formats. Most of the embroidery patterns are less than 5 inches in width and height with not more than 15 color threads which makes it quite easy to replicate. Debsews has a small but cute collection of free applique embroidery designs. The free standing lace coaster is done quite symmetrically well. FreeTommy displays one new free embroidery design every hour. Most of these designs are cross stitch and done quite beautifully. All Free Embroidery Designs displays a free design every day and has a collection of free embroideries. You could log into this resource. You could also submit your free embroidery design at All-Free for display.

Embroidery softwares form a powerful tool in effective designing and an embroiderer often uses these tools for monograms, digitizing, sizing, fonts to name a few. Digitizing is the art of porting simple embroidery designs, photos, logos or clipart into a computer readable format which makes it a standard and universal method of replicating these designs to the same specifications in the shortest possible time.

Check out this collection of softwares at Sewing Machine Outlet. Apart from the digitizing softwares available, they have unique sizing and monogram software. The Melco sizing software has features like full scaling of designs with automatic stitch adjustment, it can rotate and transform designs, can adjust stitch counts by adding or removing stitches to retain design quality and has the ability to read or write major commercial and home formats. The embroidery card convertor boxes has the ability to read and write most embroidery formats to blank card and can download pre-digitized designs from internet, PC, hard drive. A blank card can hold up to 6 designs at a time and can work with almost all embroidery machines and existing embroidery software.

The click ‘n stitch ‘xtra with applique software (you can see the front cover above this post) can quickly create embroidery, cross-stitch and applique designs from clip art or scanned images.

Elk, moose and deer have one common feature which is accentuated in any painting or embroidery and this feature are the horns. These horns or antlers form a woven pattern in itself and various creative mazes can come into view over the animal’s head. This common feature differentiated these designs from ordinary animal embroidery designs and they formed a subtype called elk embroidery designs.

Check out this collection at Joann Designs. This is a vast resource of various types of moose, deer and elk. What is unique is that outlines and silhouttes of deer are also covered in this resource. The mix of designs is good which gives it a wholistic view.

The deer you see to your left is one of the examples. This is 4.44 inches width by 6.03 inches height with a stitch count of 19178. This is available in most machine embroidery formats like CND, CSD, DST, EXP, HUS, JEF, PES, SEW, XXX, PCS. The information on machine embroidery would come in handy here.

Some of the other ones which you should not miss are the charging deer, oval fawn scene and moose outline. The moose in circle you see adjacent here is another example of a good patch-in which can find uses in various home embroidery items. This is a 3.69 inches width by 3.69 inches height with a stitch count of 13919. The number of colors used here are 6.

We have for you today a very focused and niche area of machine embroidery designs – phrases embroidery designs. Check it out at Stitchbank.

Each of the designs have one particular saying or phrase and the theme revolves around this. Depending on the occasion or ones preferences, you can choose a particular design. The sayings could be simple and general like “The best day in my life is today” or specific like “You make my heart sing”. The image in the phrase should match the mood of the meaning of the saying. Innovation or creativity is the key and what is portrayed at Stitchbank is only a starter for us. It is for us to use our own phrases and make our embroidery designs.

The machine pattern next to this post has a height of 83.2 mm with width of 110.6 mm. It is made in 3 colors with a total of 15110 stitches.

Mardi Gras (French for “Fat Tuesday”) is also called “Shrove Tuesday”, the final day of Carnival (pronounced “CAR-nuh-vul” in English; “car-nee-VAHL” in most Romance languages – and in New Orleans, Lousiana, because of its French heritage). It is a celebration that is held just before the beginning of the Christian liturgical season of Lent.

Check out this great resource for mardi gras embroidery embroidery designs at Studio 3 Designs…really a treasure trove. All designs are available in the following formats – ART, PES, HUS, CSD, EXP, SEW, PCS, DST, XXX & JEF and the information on machine embroidery designs would come in handy here. The resource contains patterns in two hoop sizes – 3.9 by 3.9 inches and the large size – 5 by 7 inches or the 6.9 by 5 inches. All patterns are done in the traditional cultural overflowing mask fashion and are a treat to embroider.

The mask over the eyes for all the embroidery designs are focused and stitched clearly. Effort has gone in to ensure consistency in the waves of patterns around the face which form the hallmark of mardi gras embroidery designs.

Check out this amazing collection of flip flop embroidery designs at Golden Stitch. Aren’t they a beauty. These are great appliques with a variety of categories varying from polka dots, hearts, swirls, checks and floral to name a few. Most of them are the small size appliques with width and height below 4 inches each.

These are available in most machine formats like Brother/Baby Lock (PES/PCS), Bernina (ART Version 1 Through 4), Viking Husqvarna (SHV/HUS), Janome (JEF/Sew), Compucon/Singer (XXX), Tajima (DST), Melco (EXP), Pfaff (PCS/VIP).

These applique embroidery designs can be used for kids wear, T-shirts, beach wear, beach bags.

What is metallic thread embroidery? This is a machine embroidery technique which uses fibers that reflect a metallic lustre and radiance. At first look, one might mistake it to be real metal but in reality, these are only fiber threads which look like metal. Surprisingly, these fibers are comparatively less strong and hence needs to be embroidered with great care.

Why is metallic thread embroidery becoming popular? The fascinating and spell binding color lustrous combinations that emerge from this style of embroidery makes it commercially viable to operate. These are popular for embroidering apparels, wrist bands, belts, lamp shades, bags and book covers.

Check out a sample at Stitchery Mall. Isnt it spell binding! The butterflies and the flowers come to life due to the metal threading. Also you could notice the fineness of the image. The size of this particular embroidery piece is 75mm by 95mm. This can be downloaded in the following machine embroidery formats – ARTv2, ARTv4, DST, HUS, JEF, PCS, PES, SEW, VIP.

The information on machine embroidery would come in handy here.

This is an oft repeated question and I have been getting a few requests to get some cute looking borders for the embroidery hoops. We have quite a few resources on the actual embroideries or appliques but very few which really give you choices for the variety of borders that you can treat your design to. Just like in artwork, the border can make or break the look and feel of an embroidery. Hence it is important to choose the right border for the right design.

How does one do this? The rules are quite simple. Invertendo is the key. If the design is really complex and eyecatching, simple or sometimes no borders would do. If the design is simple or small and you would really want to attract the viewer, a smart border which showcases the design would be apt. The embroidery border should always focus to highlight the design – in some manner or the other.

Check out this page at Madmumbler. This focuses on some of the borders that you can choose from – as starters. But innovation is the key. Elegant borders can be used for stunning designs like the appliscapes. They generally come with single color or multi color formats from which you can choose suitably. Borders like the Holly Corner (you see besides this post) is good for simple colorful designs which need to suitably accentuated. This comes in 3 sizes, 2 of them fit the 4X4 hoop, the third fits the 5X7 hoop. These designs are available in the .hus, .pes, and .dst formats and the information on machine embroidery would come in handy here. Some of the moon corner border embroideries you see in the site are really cute and can be used as a contrast to the parent design.