Boldbobbin Documentation

Boldbobbin is embroidery digitizing software for the desktop and the web. It turns your artwork and lettering into a file your embroidery machine can sew: you draw or import shapes, lines, and text, Boldbobbin turns them into stitches, and you export a machine file.

For example, to put your shop's logo on a tote bag, you import the logo with Auto-Trace, which turns each flat color area into a fill or a satin. You check the stitches on screen, adjust anything you want, and export a PES file for a Brother machine (or DST, the format the widest range of machines reads).

It runs two ways, with the same editor:

• A desktop app (Windows and macOS).
• A web app in your browser.

Your designs are saved as .vemb project files, and you can export finished work to machine formats like DST, PES, EXP, JEF, PEC, VP3, U01, and XXX.

The interface speaks nine languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. See Languages.

What you can make

• Shapes and paths, filled with running stitch, tatami, or satin, including satin that follows the inside of a shape and tatami carrying a tiled pattern or a gradient into a second thread.
• Lettering, from six digitized fonts or from your own typefaces.
• Pixel art: paint a sprite that stitches out as cross-stitch or mini-satin.
• Line art and redwork: draw a line drawing whose thread route is planned for you, with satin or styled lines wherever you want them.
• Appliqué: a patch of fabric under a border, with machine stops to lay and trim the fabric.
• Automatic digitizing on your own computer: photos, logos and clip art, and pixel art, or one region of a picture at a time with the magic wand.
• Advanced auto-digitizing on Boldbobbin's servers, paid for in credits: a picture becomes pixel art, line art and redwork, or flat color shapes.
• A design assistant you chat with: ask Bobby (experimental) for a patch from your logo or a design from a description, and it builds it in your design.

And before you stitch it, you can measure the design's density or publish it as a link. On a team plan, designs live in a shared team library with version history.

Where to start

• New to the app? Start with Install Boldbobbin, then Create your first design, or click Tutorial in the app and digitize a coffee cup in about 20 minutes (see Take the in-app tutorial).
• Wondering where everything is? The workspace maps the editor.
• Want to understand the model? Read Vectors vs. stitches.
• Looking for one specific task? Browse the How-To Guides.
• Need a quick lookup? See Keyboard shortcuts or Export formats.
• Something not working? Try Troubleshooting.