The Internet is
a virtual playground for home embroiderers. It's time to discover its
hidden treasure if you haven't begun to use the Worldwide Web as a resource
for your embroidery hobby.
By Deborah
Jones
Thousands of home embroiderers communicate daily on the Internet, sharing
information on techniques and talking about projects they are making.
Machine manufacturers provide software updates to be downloaded, design
companies post free sample designs, and lessons are available on embroidery
software. You already may take advantage of the Internet's myriad opportunities.
If not, you simply may need a lesson in exploration.
This article will help you maneuver comfortably among embroidery sites
on the Internet and show you how to download designs. So, hang on--you're
in for a ride!
Before
You Download
Among home embroiderers, one of the most popular Internet activities is
downloading designs. Many designs are available free of charge or for a
small fee. Keep in mind that even if designs can be downloaded for free,
you are not free to share them with your friends. Free designs may be copyrighted
and posted for downloading in order to build traffic to a specific Web site.
Rather than providing friends with copies of designs that you have downloaded,
it is better to direct them to the sites where you found the designs. Note:
Check out Sara Meyer-Snuggerud's article, "The Price of Free",
in the Summer 2001 issue of Creative Machine Embroidery for
a discussion of what to look for when choosing a free downloadable design.
Make an effort to make sure that the downloaded designs are coming directly
from a source that is authorized to upload, or place the designs
to the Internet. Unscrupulous design collectors, unfortunately, have used
the Internet to share or even sell designs that do not belong to them. For
example, it is appropriate to download certain design companies' "freebies"
from their respective Web sites. However, you should be wary of downloading
or accepting e-mails containing these commercially sold designs from other
sources.
Similarly, designs that pertain to any high-profile licensed property, such
as Sesame Street® or Precious Moments®, should never be downloaded
from a free or sale site, because it is very unlikely that these designs
have been legitimately posted for download. For more information on copyrights,
visit the Embroidery Software Protection Coalition website at
www.embroideryprotection.org.
How-to
Download Note: Instructions are only for PCs running Windows operating systems.
The term downloading may sound technical, but retrieving the designs you
want is as simple as clicking your mouse. Once you are at the Web site that
has designs you want to download, you are seconds away from having the design
on your computer. Let's look at the steps to get a design from the Internet
and into your embroidery machine.
Download Location
Some embroiderers are concerned about using too much of the available storage
space on their hard drive with embroidery designs. This could become a valid
concern if you are an avid collector or you have an older computer. Beginners
are most comfortable with the downloading of designs onto a 3.5" computer
disk. However, you also can choose to download to your computer's hard drive
or removable high-capacity disks, such as Zip® or Jaz®, which are
better options for long-term design storage. After downloading designs,
you may even choose to download designs to compact discs (CDs), or transfer
designs later to this highly reliable medium.
If you choose your computer's hard drive as your download location, designate
one or more folders for your design downloads. Keep in mind that the original
download location is usually only a temporary holding location because most
designs must be unzipped before they can be opened in your embroidery software.
Make
a Download Folder
From the Start menu, go to Programs, and
then choose Windows Explorer®. If you don't see Windows
Explorer® on the programs list, click on the small arrowhead at the
bottom of the list to reveal additional programs. Note: In Windows
Millennium Edition®, Windows Explorer is inside the
Accessories section under Programs.
Once you have opened Explorer, your screen is divided into two parts, with
a narrow section on the left, and a wider section on the right. On the left
side, all drive letters that are present on your computer are displayed,
along with the main directory of your computer.
Highlight the
main drive of your computer's hard disk, usually designated as your
C drive.
When the drive
letter is highlighted with a blue background, click the left side of
your mouse with the cursor over the File menu at the
top left side of your screen.
Select New,
then Folder.
A new folder will
appear at the bottom of the list on the right side of the screen. Inside
the highlighted box, type the new name of the folder over the words
New Folder. Give the folder a personalized name, such
as My Design Downloads. After typing the new folder name,
with the cursor on an empty portion of the screen, click the left side
of your mouse. This step will assure that the folder name will not revert
to New Folder.
Downloading Process
Within a few moments, you can have a design in your new folder. Go to
a Web site that contains downloadable designs. Once at the site, on the
screen you will see a link to the page that contains the free designs.
Click on the hypertext link that refers to the free designs. Then, click
on the name of a category of designs, such as Animals. Next, click on
the picture of the design that you wish to download. On some other sites,
especially those that contain multiple formats of the same design, click
on the name of the file format rather than the file image.
Unzipping Designs
Many downloadable designs on the Internet have been compressed or zipped.
Zipping is a process in which designs or other files are compressed. Zipped
files upload and download more quickly and must be extracted or unzipped
before opened in your embroidery software. There are two basic types of
zipped files. Regular zip files have the file extension .zip following
the file name. These files require a utility program launched to unzip
the contents. The most commonly used program of this type is called Winzip®.
This full-featured program can be used to zip or unzip files. An evaluation
version can be downloaded for a free 30-day trial period on the Web at
www.winzip.com. Similar zipping software can be found
at www.pkunzip.com.
The newest browsers sometimes have unzipping software included. In each
instance, the unzipping program prompts you to designate where the unzipped
file will be placed. When the Save In screen appears during the
unzipping process, be sure to change the location to the folder or disk
where you want to store the design. After the file has been unzipped,
another version of the file name will be displayed with a different extension--the
one associated with the type of file you downloaded. For example, if you
downloaded an embroidery file of a kitty in the .PES format, it will be
displayed as kitty.zip before it has been unzipped. After unzipping, both
kitty.zip and kitty.pes will be displayed. You can open the file kitty.pes
in your appropriate embroidery software.
The second type of zipped files are self-extracting. This type does not
require an external program to unzip the file. Rather, these files have
the extension .exe at the end of the file name, which designates them
to be an executable file.
To open this type of file, open Windows Explorer®
and locate the folder where the design file has been saved. With the name
of the file displayed on the right side of the screen, place the cursor
over the name of the file and double click using the left mouse button.
The self-extraction program will be launched, and the file will execute.
As in the earlier example, you will now have a file named kitty.pes and
a file named kitty.exe.
A very popular embroidery utility program, Buzz Tools®, provides a
simple interface for unzipping and cataloging your embroidery designs.
This type of software is designed only for unzipping and cataloging embroidery
design files. If you need to download and unzip other types of files,
in addition to design files, you may need one of the zip programs mentioned
earlier, too.
