Welcome to the World of Embroidery Software!

Hi Julie and our new friends,

Over the weekend I watched the movie Julie and Julia. Isn’t it interesting we are just beginning our first blog and your name is Julie! While Julie in the movie was learning to cook and blog about her experiences, I should have blogged my experiences learning machine embroidery.

When I took sewing and tailoring in high school many years ago, there were just mechanical machines. I am sure like many of our friends in the embroidery world, when they first saw an embroidery machine; they probably sat there for hours just watching the machine create beautiful designs. On my first day of my new job, I was sitting and watching the machine sew out this amazing flower and someone walked up behind me and said, “Kathy, the machine will not stitch out any faster with your watching!” He had startled me, and I fell out of my chair and onto the floor. What a way to be remembered on your first day of the job. Truth be told, I still love to watch my embroidery work stitch out.

Since my previous jobs and training were in education and non-profit management, my approach to learning the VIP embroidery software was to learn just like many of our customer’s learn their own software and embroidery machine. On the first day, I was given a new computer, software, and an embroidery machine and was very eager to unpack everything and get started. I read every manual provided with the embroidery software and machine and went through all the QuickStart exercises. I had so many questions written down and the first chance I got, I asked my mentors. My questions were probably the same questions many of our customers had. I made a lot of mistakes, but I believe that I know the software better by taking this approach. Actually, I affectionately called my mistakes, “creative opportunities”. In just a few months, I was teaching classes, sharing my mistakes with others and my motto seemed to be, “Ask me how I know!”

Six years later, I am still learning and I believe that is why I love embroidery software. I am so blessed to be able to spend time with some very creative educators and sewing stars. Plus, the software keeps getting easier with more features.