The older EL designs were extraordinary dense most of the time and have far too many stitches to be cost effective for selling. In addition, they had just too many color changes. I mean, geeze - 40,000 stitches in a bit over 4x4 space with 12-25 color changes? Ridiculous! I just stopped buying their realistic designs. However they do have some newer designs that are much more reasonable. I have finally started buying a few things again, but I am very careful to look at the stitch count and number of color changes before I buy it!
Pam
I have heard a number of people recommend that you enlarge the design by 10% or so without changing the stitch count. That will reduce the density, but I would do a test sew before using it on something important.