Turn your handwriting into an embroidery file.
A signature, a name in your own hand, a line from a recipe card. Here is how the app turns it into a file your embroidery machine sews, which file each brand wants, and what to expect from the thread. It is free, it takes a few minutes, and the writing never leaves your device.
Jump to: Three ways in · The file your machine wants · What the thread does · Making it fit · Getting it to the machine · Nothing is uploaded
Three ways in
Sign on the screen. Open the app on a phone or a tablet and sign with a finger or a stylus, the way you would sign a card. You can sign again as often as you like before you keep one. A phone is the best pen most of us own for this.
Photograph writing on paper. Have someone sign with a felt-tip or a gel pen on plain paper, take a photo in good light, and bring it into the app. It crops to the writing and traces the ink. A ballpoint usually makes a line too thin and too light to trace, and the app tells you when that happens, so it is worth signing again with a darker pen. This is how a parent’s or a grandparent’s signature gets onto a quilt.
Type a name. If there is no signature to be had, type the words and pick a lettering face: Schoolhouse, Standard Hand, Classic, Casual, Italic Classic, or Bank. Each line you type becomes its own layer, so a name, a date and a message can each have their own size, color and stitch.
The file your machine wants
Embroidery machines do not read pictures. They read a stitch file, a list of every needle drop in order, with the color changes between. The app writes that file itself, in your machine’s own format, so there is nothing to convert afterwards. Pick your brand in the app and it hands you the right one.
| Your machine | File | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Brother, Baby Lock | .pes | Brother makes both. The app writes the PES the machine shows on its screen, no conversion. |
| Janome, Elna | .jef | Stitched and checked on a Janome with the RE20a hoop. |
| Pfaff, Husqvarna Viking | .vp3 | One file for both, since they share a mount and a format. Marked new in the app until more testers report back. |
| Bernina | .exp | Stitched on a real Bernina. Melco machines read EXP too. |
| Singer | .xxx | For the SE and Legacy lines. Marked new in the app until a tester reports back. |
| Tajima, Ricoma, and anything not listed | .dst | The file nearly every machine reads. Pick it when you are not sure. |
Not sure which machine you have? Choose Not sure in the app and you get a DST, which most machines read. If yours reads something else, write to me and I will look into it.
What the thread does with handwriting
A pen line has no thickness to speak of. Thread does, so the app asks how you want the line sewn.
Satin is a close zigzag along the line, from a fine one to a bold one. It is what most people picture when they think of an embroidered signature: a raised, shiny line with some weight to it. Good for a signature and for a name in a clear hand.
Hand stitch is a running stitch sewn three times over, which comes out looking like someone stitched it by hand with a needle. It is thin, so it keeps small loops open and suits fine writing, a recipe card, a note. Heavy is the same stitch sewn five times over, for a bolder hand-stitched look.
Size matters more than style. Thread cannot draw a loop smaller than itself. As a rule of thumb, keep the small letters of a signature at least about 3/16 in (4.5 mm) tall, and the app holds typed lettering to a capital of at least 5/16 in (8 mm). Below that, loops fill in and an e turns into a dot. A signature 3 to 4 in wide stitches cleanly on almost any machine.
Making it fit
Tell the app your machine and your hoop, and the preview shows your label inside the hoop and says plainly whether it fits. If it does not, Resize to fit brings it down to the largest size that does, and Rotate turns the whole design a quarter turn, which is often all a long signature needs. Add a frame around it if you like, square, oval or wavy, in satin, a hand stitch, hearts, flowers or a vine. The sizes of every hoop the app knows are on the hoop sizes page.
Getting it to the machine
Save the file. On a computer, copy it to a USB stick and put the stick in the machine. On an iPad or a phone, use the share button to send it to yourself, then move it to the stick from there. The guide inside the app walks through the handoff step by step.
Stitch it on a scrap first, with the stabilizer and thread you mean to use. Every machine and every fabric pulls a little differently, and one test tells you more than any amount of reading.
Nothing is uploaded
The whole thing, the tracing, the stitching and the file, happens in your browser on your own device. Your signature is never sent to me or to anyone. I built it that way because a signature is the one thing people are right to be careful with. The privacy page says exactly what the site does and does not keep.
It is free to use. If it saves you a trip to the digitizer, there is a tip jar after you export.
David
Last updated 6 October 2026.