What is a JEF file?

Getting it onto the machine

USB stick – copy the file into a folder named EMBF. On the stick, not inside another folder.

How the file is built

Two signed bytes per stitch, dx and dy in tenths of a millimetre – the same simple shape as Melco EXP. 80 01 is a colour change, followed by a stitch of zero.

Colours

The colour list sits in the header, so the machine can show the thread order before the first stitch is sewn.

What goes wrong with a JEF file

• The file goes in a folder called EMBF on the stick – on the stick, not inside another folder. This is the most common reason a Janome says the stick is empty.
• The size of the design is not stored as a width and a height but as four distances out from the middle: 14 × 9 mm is written 70, 45, 70, 45, in tenths of a millimetre. Written as a width and a height, every design looks twice its size to the machine.
• Right after a colour change or a jump the needle is already where the next stitch goes, so that first stitch has no length. A writer that tidies away stitches of zero drops it: the thread lands, the needle never goes down, and no preview on screen shows it.

If your machine is not listed

Use DST. Every commercial machine reads it, and most home machines will too – it is the format the trade falls back on. The stitches are identical in all seven; only the wrapper differs, so «which format?» is a question about your machine and never about quality.

Why make it here

• You see the whole mark before you pay – every stitch, at the size you asked for. If it is not right, do not buy it.
• Nobody touches the file afterwards. What is on screen is what the machine gets, and it is worked out in seconds, not in a day.
• The same stitches come out in all seven formats. Change your machine and you do not start over – you pick another format.
• From $0.40 a file on a yearly plan. Studio’s first month is $9 for 20 files, then $29 a month – cancel any time.

Drop a logo, look at it closely, and take the JEF only if it is right.

What you can send in