I have a Janome 11K and can use up to a 2gb USB stick in the machine. I can save patterns on any size stick but in the nachine it can use only up to the 2 so be sure how large a memory your machine can handle.

While I have a Janome MB-4 embroidery machine, I imagine that downloading to the computer would be the same process no matter what machine you have. I have a folder set up on my PC strictly for downloading all my embroidery files. When purchasing from an online site, you'll have to specify which embroidery format you want the design in (mine is a jef format, but your's will be whatever is compatible with your embroidery machine). I then download them in a zip file directly to my embroidery download file that I set up on my computer. You can then unzip them and save to whatever place you have on your computer for your usable embroidery designs or to a USB stick (or whatever device you need to transfer it to your machine). I am able to send mine directly from my computer to my embroidery machine, which is really nice. Hope this helps you out.

Question?

Is there an embroidery board comparable to this quilting board?

My favorite was the Martha Pullen Machine Embroidery forum. It's still very good, but when they switched servers they lost over 100,000 posts. ;-(
These two also have specific areas for ME:
free embroidery stuff
Sewing Forum

They are usually "zipped files" when downloaded. Now that I have said that I order most of my embroidery from Embroidery Library and you have a choice of downloading "unzipped" OR "zipped", they also offer one or two free sew outs every month, would be a good place to try downloading.I put mine to a file, unzipped, then as needed go to my files and put it to my USB

I don't think you can open the files on your computer unless you have a digitizer program, or a program that lets you make changes before you move it to your machine. Transfer to the memory stick and put it in your machine and try to open it there.

Ahh ... that's the machine I WANTED, my husband surprised me by buying the 950.

Your machine takes either a memory card OR a USB.

When you download the files to your PC, make a new folder on your desktop called "Embroidery Designs" and save all of your downloaded files there. Most of the sites I use give you a choice of what file type you want to download as - you want PES.

Unless you have some kind of embroidery software loaded on your PC, you will not be able to open or view the PES files. But when you look at the folder you will see the name of the file listed to know that it is indeed there.

When your ready, copy (don't cut & paste!) your file to either the memory stick or the USB. I can't walk you through opening it on your sewing machine cause I don't have that model.

As far as software on your PC to view and/or modify embroidery designs, and make your own - there are plenty out there. Some are quite pricey, but thanks to a board member I found one that is free. If interested ... ask and I'll drop a few notes about that. Or you can do a search here on the board on Sierra Design Era (that's what it's called). I have it and have had *some* success with it, have also had some cussing sessions :)

Have fun!!

I have a Brother innovis 1250D, so a lot of what I say here may have already been said, but most of the Brothers have the same basics. First when downloading, make yourself a folder to send the design to on your computer so that you can find it later. When downloading the format will be PES and a lot of time the files will be zipped, so you may need a program to unzip them. I use Winzip which can be downloaded for a free trial and then later paid for as a one time pyt. As someone said, put your downloads on the computer, and you may want to put them in a backup disc like cd in case later your computer crashes or you get a new one. (Ihave been there and done THAT!) Download only those designs you will be using at the moment onto the stick, so for that reason just a 1 or 2 gig stick is more than enough. The reason for this is that the stick will hold too much for the machines computer to read and you will just have to move or delete the designs to get to where it will. Also the screens on a lot of the Brothers have small black and white only screens, and the designs are hard to read on screen. With downloaded embroidery, sometimes the formats will cause Brother to specify the color wrong and Brother will tell you some weird color. There is another free program out there that will allow you to resize your designs and see the colors in them, it is called my editor(wilcom trusizer), and it is a very powerful program. If you are paying for a design make sure that it will fit on your hoop sizes availabale becuase some sites offer designs in numerous sizes that you cannot use. Brother machines (at least mine will only allow you to up or down size the loaded design about 10 percent) so keep this in mind. There are numerous sites that offer free designs, just google free embroidery. Two of the best I have found are embroidery library (emlibrary.com), and embroiderydesigns.com. there is also a magazine designs in machine embroidery that caters to emrboidery that offers some free designs each month and of course sells a lot of stuff. Hope this helps and please feel free to pm me if you have a specific question I can help with. When I started, I had a lot of hair tearing days till I got it right but I do love it and often combine embroidery designs in my quilts.:)

I don't know if I can help or not. I have the brother 750, I have the PE DESIGN software and a reader box. I download to the computer and than write the designs to a card that is inserted in the computer. You will probably write to your flash that came with the machine.
Mary in TX

I download to a floppy disk also. It has to be unzipped for me. I have a Melco machine.