Getting a design onto your embroidery machine

The short version

Format the USB stick as FAT32, put the file in the top level of the stick, and give it a short plain name — letters, digits and dashes, no spaces or accented characters. That combination works on every machine, and most transfer problems are one of those three things.

Most machines will also read a design from a folder one level down, but the root always works, so it is the safe default. Stichii names exported files this way automatically.

• FAT32, not exFAT or NTFS — this is the single most common cause.
• File in the root of the stick. One folder level is usually fine; a folder inside a folder is not.
• Short ASCII names — no spaces, no accents, no punctuation beyond a dash or underscore.
• Eject the stick properly before pulling it out.

Which format for which machine

Pick the format your machine reads natively rather than the most universal one. DST is the closest thing to a universal format, but it carries no thread colours — the machine will ask you to set the colour sequence by hand. A native format keeps that information.

• Brother / Babylock — PES (PEC for stitch-only).
• Janome — JEF.
• Bernina — EXP, exported as a three-file set (see below). Melco reads the .exp alone.
• Pfaff and Husqvarna Viking — VP3, or HUS/SHV for older Designer-series machines.
• Tajima and commercial multi-needle — DST; Barudan also reads U01.

Why a machine cannot see your file

Machines fail quietly here. A file it cannot read is not usually reported as an error — it simply does not appear in the list, which looks identical to having copied it to the wrong stick.

Work through the causes in order of likelihood. Brother documents most of these outright: a stick formatted exFAT rather than FAT32 is rejected, and a filename containing special characters is not displayed at all — the design is simply absent from the list.

• Wrong filesystem — reformat the stick as FAT32. Large sticks often ship as exFAT, which is why "use a small stick" is common advice; the size is not the real problem.
• Special characters in the name — rename using only letters, digits, dash and underscore.
• A folder inside a folder — move the file up; one level is read, deeper nesting is not.
• Too many designs — Brother stops listing past about 200 patterns, folders included.
• Design too large — a PE800-class machine caps at 200,000 stitches and an 18 x 13 cm field.
• A zipped download — unzip it first; the machine cannot open archives.

Designs bigger than the hoop

If a design does not fit your largest hoop, it has to be stitched in several hoopings. Stichii splits it for you: the Machine Check panel writes one file per hooping, numbered in sewing order, plus a printable sewing sheet listing the order and how far to shift the fabric each time.

Each hooping also stitches small registration crosses in the strip it shares with the next one. When you re-hoop, line the fabric up so the next design's crosses land on the ones already sewn, then pick those marks out once the design is finished.

Bernina needs three files, not one

A Bernina USB EXP design is a set of three files that travel together: the .exp stitches, a .inf file holding the thread colours, and a .bmp preview the machine shows in its browser. Plain EXP carries no colour information at all, so an .exp on its own sews correctly but loads with a default colour sequence and no picture.

Use File → Export Bernina Set to get all three at once, and copy them to the stick together.

Controlling the order designs appear in

Brother machines list folders first, then PES files, then DST files, each group in alphabetical order — not in the order you copied them. If you need a specific sequence, prefix the names (01_, 02_, 03_) rather than copying them one at a time.

Stichii already does this for multi-hoop exports: hooping files are numbered with a leading zero so the machine's alphabetical listing matches the order you should sew them.

Wireless transfer

Brother (Artspira), Husqvarna and Pfaff (mySewnet) all offer wireless design transfer, but each runs through the manufacturer's own account and app rather than a public interface any other software can use. There is no way for a browser-based tool to push a file directly into those services, so a USB stick remains the reliable route from Stichii to the machine.