Can you resize embroidery designs?

You can resize an embroidery design a little, but large changes will mess up the stitching. A safe range is usually about 10 to 20 percent up or down.

An embroidery file is a fixed set of stitches, not a picture. When you stretch it, the same stitches are spread over a bigger area, so the fill looks thin and gaps appear. When you shrink it, the stitches crowd together, which makes the design stiff and can break thread or needles.

Some embroidery software recalculates the stitches when you resize. That gives better results than resizing on the machine, but fine details and lettering still suffer at larger changes.

The better options are:

•       Use a different size of the same design. Many designs come in several hoop sizes, each digitized separately.

•       Have it re-digitized. For a size that isn't offered, the design needs to be rebuilt at that size.