Digitising is the bit everyone gets stuck on — deciding where satin goes, where fill goes, how dense, how much to compensate for the fabric pulling in. Stitch Lab does that step itself. Drop a logo in, get a machine-ready file out.
Then £19/month, or £149 once and it's yours forever. Cancel any time.
Most cheap tools just fill everything and hope. Stitch Lab splits each colour into its separate shapes, measures how wide every one actually is, and gives each the stitch that suits it — satin for thin strokes at the right angle, tatami fill with a clean border for solid areas.
A logo file, or type text and pick from 30+ fonts. Choose the placement — left chest, full back, sleeve — and it sizes to the standard for that spot and picks the right hoop.
Colours detected, scan noise cleaned, every shape measured and assigned satin or fill, threads matched. A stitch-by-stitch simulator shows what the needle will do before you use any thread.
The desktop app finds your machine's drive by itself and writes the file straight to it. Print a run sheet with thread order, hoop and stabiliser for whoever's sewing.
Most tools at this price do lettering and a basic fill. This is the list the professional packages charge four figures for.
Logos digitise themselves — every shape measured, satin or fill chosen per shape. Or draw it yourself: running lines, satin columns, bezier outlines with proper curve handles, and stitch-by-stitch node editing.
Appliqué runs the real sequence with machine stops for laying and trimming. Monograms follow the traditional layout. Freestanding lace builds an interlocking net that survives the rinse. Cutwork reinforces before you cut.
Multi-hoop splitting with registration marks for oversized work. Batch name-drop for staff kit. Printable run sheets. Per-piece costing. Opens and edits existing PES, DST, EXP and JEF files.
Pick the garment and it sets needle, stabiliser, topping, tension, speed and density to match — cap fronts, softshell, hi-vis, leather, towelling. The settings that decide whether it looks professional or homemade.
Tonal layers of varying stitch length, crossing at different angles so it reads as shading rather than a flat block.
Brother, Baby Lock, Janome, Elna, Bernina, Melco, Tajima, Singer, Husqvarna, Pfaff. Five formats, each verified byte-for-byte before it saves.
There's a gap between "free but you do the digitising by hand" and "a grand". That gap is the whole point of this.
| Software | Price | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Wilcom EmbroideryStudio | $790/yr – $3,499 | Industrial. Priced for factories. |
| Hatch Digitizer | $1,000 – $1,699 | Powerful, steep learning curve. |
| Brother PE-Design 11 | ~£1,000 | One brand, one-off, still manual. |
| Embrilliance StitchArtist | $159 – $649 | Modular — buy three add-ons for one workflow. |
| Ink/Stitch | Free | Excellent, but you're digitising by hand. |
| VEIL Stitch Lab | £149 once | Auto-digitises, and does appliqué, monogramming, lace, cutwork, photo and multi-hoop. Built for garment work. |
No subscription, no per-design fee, no licence server phoning home. Your key works offline, forever, on the machine sat next to your embroidery machine.
No signup. Nothing uploaded anywhere.
No charge for 30 days. Cancel before then and you pay nothing.
Cheaper than eight months. 30-day refund.
For production floors. Still less than one year of Wilcom.
Course technicians: departmental licences are free. Get in touch.
Monthly or one-off? If you're going to keep using it, £89 works out cheaper than six months and never renews. Monthly is there so you can start without committing — take the free month, do a few real jobs, and decide after.
Brother and Baby Lock (PES/PEC), Janome and Elna (JEF), Bernina and Melco (EXP), Tajima and most commercial machines (DST), Singer/Husqvarna/Pfaff (DST). Each machine family loads its own hoop sizes, and there's a fully custom option if yours isn't listed. If you're not sure, try the free version — it exports every format.
Photographs, gradients and drop shadows — those aren't embroidery and no tool makes them so. Flat artwork only: logos, lettering, badges, line art. Text below about 7mm letter height won't hold detail on a single-needle machine; that's physics, not software. And it can't drive your needle live — no software can, machine makers don't expose that.
No. The desktop app works entirely offline, and your licence is verified on your own machine without contacting any server. The web version installs as an app and works offline too after the first load.
You start the subscription, we don't charge for 30 days, and you get the full Pro version straight away — unlimited logos, batch, run sheets, the lot. Cancel before the month is up and you pay nothing. Anything you made in that time is yours to keep; stitch files don't stop working.
Your licence runs to the end of the period you've paid for, then quietly goes back to the free version. Every stitch file you've already exported keeps working forever — they're just files on your machine. Nothing gets locked or deleted.
Yes — buy the one-off whenever you like and cancel the subscription. Get in touch and we'll knock what you've already paid this month off the price.
Multi-hoop splitting. A jacket back or a banner is bigger than any home hoop, so the design has to be cut into sections that line up perfectly across re-hoopings — Stitch Lab does that with registration marks and a printed order of work. Plus unlimited machines on your site and support that goes straight to us, not a queue.
Honestly: they do more. Wilcom is built for industrial production across every discipline, and if you need chenille, sequins or full pattern-making you should buy Wilcom. What we do is the garment workflow — logos, lettering, appliqué, monograms, lace, production runs — and we do the digitising automatically, which they largely don't. For a shop putting logos on clothing, that's the whole job at a fraction of the price.
Straight after paying — the confirmation page shows it immediately, and it's in your email receipt. Paste it into Upgrade → Activate in the app and everything unlocks. It's yours permanently; keep the email.
Fill this in and it comes straight to us. If you're after the student rate, say which course you're on. If you're a shop or dealer, pick that and we'll send the trade terms.