Part 6, Holiday Project, Decor digitized and stitched in minutes for Thanksgiving!

Single leave duplicated and rotated twice!

I love the earth tone colors of Thanksgiving with a dash of brilliant orange, gold, red and more.  Nature can be so easy to translate into embroidery, especially plants.

These three maple leaves were simple to digitize in embroidery software.  

Scan or take a photo of  a leaf  straight from the convenient outdoors and save it as a jpg. Bring the leaf image into your software as a background.  Use the drawing pen or line drawing tools and trace the veins of the leaf.  Be sure to trace two lines of thread for every area of each vein.  

Single Leaf Screen Shot

No need for exact positioning of the layers of thread.  See the single leaf screen shot below. A less than perfect trace actually looks much prettier when the design stitches as nature is not perfect. Remember that what you see on your computer screen does not take in the nature of thread and fabric.  Apply a double stitch or bean stitch style of outline to the vein.  Trace the outside of the leaf and consider applying a fun motif.  

The sample shown uses a stem stitch which is actually a slanted spaced zigzag stitch. The photos are software screen shots which look "messy". Once the leaves are stitched, they are perfect for table runners, placemats and more.  

The leaf took less than 5 minutes to trace and apply stitch attributes.  Bonus: the design stitches out in just a few minutes because of the outline style of the pattern.  A border hoop option makes this even easier to stitch out.

If you are not sure how to bring an image into your software, or the best tools to trace with, consider giving yourself a Craftsy Class: Digitizing Machine Embroidery Designs.