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Stitch Toolbox

About

Tools for embroidery files that show their work.

Most free converters online are the same open-source library behind a form, with a queue and a watermark. We wanted the whole toolbox in one place, running on your machine, with numbers instead of promises: what a conversion drops, why a file will break needles, how far a design can be resized before it stops being the same design.

How it was checked

  • Readers for 24 formats were run against pyembroidery on 226 real files from Brother, Janome, Wilcom, Hatch, Embird, PEmbroider and Ink/Stitch exports. Where the two disagreed, the same design in six other formats decided which was right (twice it was ours: VP3 from Premier+ and the compressed VIP format, which pyembroidery cannot read at all).
  • Eight of the 11 writers are byte-identical to pyembroidery on a reference design that exercises trims, stops, jumps and colour changes. All 11 outputs are read back by both readers with the source geometry.
  • The satin lettering density was calibrated against commercial designs in that corpus: their same-rail spacing sits at 0.40–0.41 mm, and so does ours.
  • Lettering is tested on all 17 bundled fonts with a coverage check: at least 93 % of each letter's area must lie within a thread's width of a stitch, and under 3 % of stitches may fall outside the letter.

What it does not claim

A pre-flight verdict is a measurement of the file, not a guarantee about your fabric, stabiliser or thread. Resize with density correction re-spaces stitches; it cannot re-digitise underlay or pull compensation. Lettering here is built from the glyph outline; a hand-digitised font will still beat it at very small sizes.

What we do not do

Appliqué. Placement, tack-down, satin border and a cut file that fits is a different problem with its own product, Appliqué Maker, by the same people. And auto-digitising from a photo, which is the hardest problem in the field and one we would rather not do badly.

Who

Stitch Toolbox is made by Allegro Digital. Questions, bugs, a file that surprised you: [email protected].