Tips on Downloading & Saving Your Embroidery Designs

Buying new embroidery designs is just so exciting! You may have plans to make something with it immediately or want to save it in your collection for a later date. But whatever you decide, the first thing you’ll need to do is download the design and save it to your computer.  Unzip your files and transfer to your sewing machine.

Sounds easy right?  - I know from the number of e-mails and queries to our Facebook Group, that sometimes it is not that easy!

We all have different computers, systems and embroidery machines, plus different skill levels on our computers.  When we get a query about not being able to download, or see a design on your machine, it’s a process of elimination to work out ‘what’ the issue is.

 So what is the process in 'plain speak'

• Download File/Design
• Unzip Files
• Transfer Files to your machine

DOWNLOAD

Downloading a file is computer speak for saving a file/folder to your Computer

The Computer will save the file to wherever you tell it to – normally the last drive/folder you saved (downloaded) to

SAVE

When you start out downloading designs, you might initially save your embroidery files to your desktop or a Downloads Folder.  

From experience, can I suggest you create a Kreative Kiwi (and other designer) Folder

• Later on, when you’re looking for a design you know you have, you can go straight to your Kreative Kiwi folder.

UNZIP

To make Design sets quicker to download, we ‘zip’ or compress the files to make a smaller file.

• Before your embroidery machine can read our files, we need to ‘unzip’ (un-compress, extract) the files.
• You do not need special software to do this, most modern computers have this ability.
• Generally it is simply RIGHT CLICK on the zipped folder, then choose EXTRACT 

VIDEO

Watch Kay unzip file and transfer to her USB, then machine

Watch Sue from OML Embroidery 

• Create a Folder on your computer to save your designs
• Download a file
• Unzip a File

Here are our Top Frequently asked Questions about Downloading 

Can I save Embroidery designs to my I-Pad?

I'm having troublle unzipping your designs - my computer says I need to install Winzip

When I try to open my designs, my Computer says I need Acrobat Reader?

Windows 10 shows my embroidery designs as PDF's

I've downloaded and unzipped your designs, but there is nothing showing on my machine

Why does my Machine stitch in a different order than your Instructions?