When I design a new product for my Etsy business I usually start with an idea that a potential customer has given me. Then we’ll brainstorm out their ideas and see what kind of images would be suitable for creating their piece of costume embroidery.
I’ll let you into a secret – I can’t draw. No matter how much I’d love to be able to draw I have never managed to master even the basics. So when I am looking to create a design for a client (or for my Etsy store) I go to svg file download sites in order to find images that I can work with.
The biggest benefit of purchasing svg files to use in my commercial designs is that I know they’re licensed and I can use them to make money without restriction. So many people aren’t aware of copyright laws and just take images from the internet without checking they’re allowed to use them.
The other major benefit is that you get a fantastic vector image that you can scale to any size and output at any level of quality. It makes them a versatile and worthwhile investment for the future because I have no idea what direction my business will grow in!
It’s certainly a steep learning curve to understand how to make embroidery design files from vector files that you’ve purchased, but if you do embroidery as a business it’s a skill that is well worth knowing. Getting your designs turned into embroidery files by someone else isn’t hugely expensive, but it does mean that you have to send everything out to another person and wait for them to come back before you can start work on the finished items.
I have very basic software, the Janome Digitizer JR that came with my machine. But it’s enough to work with raster files that I’ve extracted from my svg file purchases. To turn the SVG file into the kind of image files I can work with in my embroidery software I use Adobe Illustrator, but many of the embroidery design software bundles available now can actually work directly with the SVG files which cuts out that middle step!
Learning to work with SVG files to create embroidery designs either for business or pleasure can be super enjoyable. You don’t have to be able to draw, you just have to learn how to use the software and then sew the designs up in creative ways!
And the benefit of digitizing your own designs from SVG files is that, even if you can’t draw, nobody else will have the same embroidery design as you, and everything you make will be unique because of that. Suddenly a standard garment or accessory made from a commercial pattern can become something truly unique that nobody else in the world has!
But lets face it – even if you can draw, sometimes you don’t want to reinvent the wheel. A quick check online could mean that you save lots of time drawing up designs where someone else has already created something similar and made it available to purchase.
Happy crafting!
