Need help with Embroidery machine project
 

Not sure where to post this? I got a Brother SE 400 embroidery machine a couple of years ago. I did a few projects with it and then I went back to my regular machine. Now I would like to make some blocks to put in a quilt that I want to do. I have some embroidery downloads on my machine but I don't know what they are? How can I see what they are? Should I have "renamed" them when I downloaded them?
I can't find the book that came with the machine that shows exactly what the designs that came with my machine look like either. No memory! lol

I have a Pfaff so I can't help but I am sure someone on this board can.

Brother has all their machine manuals online and the design are usually in them

Your designs should have a .pes in the name. Do not change this, it is the format your machine reads. You need a computer program to see the designs as pictures, or copy them to a card or usb that will go into your machine which will read them, perhaps one at a time. Wilcom have a free program to resize designs called Truesizer, which will open them, again 1 at a time. I use Buzz Tools, it will display many designs, and you can change colours, but costs.

pm me if you need more info.

I think I understand your problem as I have an older PE 200 that stumps me when I use a card (I rarely use this machine), so I print my designs with a software program, and have the image & thread color changes at my side. If you can't remember or figure them out, you might start test stitching until you recognize. Does your machine have connection to computer--can you send back to computer? and then use a free program to see the image?? I know you cannot send the orig installed desogns out of the machine. In future when you D/L designs, maybe you could rename them or also D/L the chart.

I hope you figured it out, but if not here is the free manual online....

http://www.kenssewingcenter.com/free...l-p-30860.html

You should be able to call it up on the sewing machine screen. Select the design and it should appear on the screen

Thanks for all the help. I was able to download the book I needed. I am just going to have to do a trial and error thing. I like the idea of changing the names so I will have a clue!

As it was previously stated, you will not be able to view the designs on your PC unless you have a software program that will display machine embroidery designs. (.Pes) is not a graphic format so the PC doesn't know how to display them. There are many software programs that will do this so you will need to google "software to display machine embroidery designs" or something like that........ A few may be available to download for free. I also use Buzz Software but specifically it is the Buzz Explore program. My LQS recommended 'Buzz' software as it is relatively inexpensive and fairly easy to learn.

Just be certain you DO NOT change the extension on the end - for Brother, it's ".PES". I have an older Viking machine, the extension on my files are ".HUS".
For example, if an embroidery CD says it is "multi-format" , it might have a file called "Puppy" - and it would have it multiple times, but with different extensions, like "Puppy.pes" and "Puppy.hus" and "Puppy.shv" - that would be three different machines - Brother, Viking and I forget who uses the ".shv"
If you change that extension, your machine won't be able to read it.

As others have said, there are several different products online that will "read" your embroidery files. I use EMBIRD - it wasn't free, but the different components are sold as "add on" (like different fonts, digitizers and so on). I didn't want to design my own stuff, I just wanted something that would convert the files for my older Viking machine. It's a great product.