What that means is that if you click one of them and buy something… I get a commission.

Just to let you know that some of the links on this site are affiliate links. The quickest way to do that is with a “3D” or simulated view of the design that will render a lifelike image. If you resize this design (or others with non-uniform stitch effects) be sure to check these stitches to see if the effect has been maintained. Speciality stitch effects like this can really try a resizer program and may result ina real miss. This is a different technique than a pattern fill, which generally gives a flat wallpaper appearance. Here, I used “stitch carving” to create the illusion of scales, depth and sinuous curves on the body. Often a more interesting approach is through creative use of stitches. Running stitch detail over flat fills is another type of outlining it just happens to be within a design instead of on the edges. Don’t see the outline on the tail? It’s because it’s in the same color it is outlining. This design has outlines to define the eye and around the fiery tail for a cleaner edge. True, some designs seem to need them to appear “finished” but they don’t belong on every design. They are hard to keep in alignment when sewing on a wide range of fabrics and they can make the design look like “color book” art. I personally don’t like outlines, especially black ones. Some other points to notice about this design: Look at the rich detail achieved in only 7 colors and no outlines. If you’ve already downloaded this design, you may have noticed that there are 8 unique colors listed-see the rest of this newsletter for why! POINTS OF NOTE IN THIS DESIGN I didn’t really plan to sew the entire design in metallics but when I started picking colors, I ended up with 5 of my 7 colors as metallic. I also wanted a design that would really show off the SoftLight Metallic threads in big way. There is simply too much detail to cram this design into a 4×4 hoop!

Several people have asked why there isn’t one for smaller hoops… Many of us have machines with large hoops now and want embroideries that were designed for that hoop size, not simply enlarged for them. Drawing is not my favorite thing to do-it can easily take me longer to research and draw something than to digitize it! I’ve been thinking about this all year-this is the Year of the Dragon-and after not finding any suitable artwork, I finally gave in and started sketching one myself. If you’ve been following me on Facebook, you’ve probably seen the large dragon embroidery design.

Dragon embroidery design free download