SVG to embroidery file
Turn a SVG into a stitch file your machine reads. What survives, what does not, and what it costs. Every stitch on screen before you pay.
What a SVG gives the machine
An SVG is not a picture. It is the drawing itself — a list of paths with coordinates — so there is nothing to trace and nothing to guess at. The shapes go straight into the engine. That is why an SVG gives the sharpest mark of any source, and why the same file is right at 20 mm and at 300 mm.
What goes wrong with a SVG
- Text is skipped, and the engine says so: «Text was skipped — convert it to outlines in your drawing program first.» A font is a set of instructions, not a shape, until you outline it.
- A shape with only an outline is skipped: «convert strokes to filled paths first». A stroke tells a screen to draw a line of a certain width; thread needs an area with an inside and an edge.
- An embedded picture inside an SVG is skipped, and so is a reused symbol («use»). Expand them before saving, or the parts of the mark that were symbols simply come out missing.
Do this first
In Illustrator: select all, Type → Create Outlines, then Object → Path → Outline Stroke, and save as plain SVG. Those two menu items fix almost everything that gets skipped.
Which file comes out
Pick the one your machine reads — DST, PES, JEF, VP3, EXP or XXX — or take the SVG, which is the drawing itself. The same stitches come out in all of them, so changing machine is a different download, not a new job.
What it costs
One file is $9, with no account. From $0.20 a file on a yearly plan. You see the whole mark, at the size you asked for, before you pay for anything.
- Can I convert an SVG to DST?
- Yes, and it is the best source there is. The paths are used as they are, with no tracing step, so the edges are exactly where you drew them.
- Why is my SVG missing its text?
- A font is not a shape. Outline the type in your drawing program — in Illustrator it is Type → Create Outlines — and save again.
- Does the size matter for an SVG?
- No. A vector has no resolution, so the same file is right at any width. Only the millimetres you type in the workshop decide how it is stitched.
Nobody corrects the file afterwards. What is on screen is what the machine gets, and it is worked out in seconds.
Other files you can send
Measured in the workshop, not quoted from a brochure.