Embroidery Software Snippets: Convert To Redwork

This is a perfect mini tutorial to follow along and learn your Artistic Digitizer software.

Did you get the code & download the free trial of this software – hurry free trial period ends 31st May!!

We are continuing with our brief overview of Janome Artistic Digitizer! It recently became available as a free trial, you can click here  or here for more details.

One of the new features is an easy one step conversion from an embroidery design with full color, to a single color outline design.

But first, what is redwork exactly? Redwork became popular in the late 1800s/early 1900s as a form of needle art. Pictures were embroidered on plain light colored fabric, using red thread, which was one of the first colors of thread available.

Picture courtesy of Pinterest

Fast forward to now, and redwork is seeing a growing popularity among machine embroidery enthusiasts. You can find many design collections of redwork designs. But you don’t need to purchase specific redwork designs, you can easily convert full color embroidery designs to redwork using Artistic Digitizer – in ONE step.

If you are following this with your own copy of the software, open it up and select an embroidery design. With it selected, either Right-click and select Convert to Redwork or select Convert from the top tool bar and select Convert to Redwork.  Easy as that.

From L to R: Original design, converted less than nicely, and on the right above: Redwork after using Convert to Curves.

Sometimes you will have an embroidery design that will convert and look less than nice. How do you fix it? In this case select undo to go back to the original. In the right hand Properties section, select Convert to Curves then select Convert to Redwork. (Make sure your original design is still selected). Convert to Curves removes the little stitches and those unnecessary for Redwork.

Once you converted, you can edit the embroidery if need be – use the Edit Nodes tool.

Another way to edit would be to select the embroidery, Right-click >Break apart.  Now you can select parts of the embroidery and delete these if necessary.

For more info on this feature, be sure to check out the included video tutorials built into the software.

Thank you to Anne Hein for creating this content!

Until next time,

JanomeGirl