The colours of a design which appear on the machine screen or in software may be different from the original colours used by the designer.
This is because there are 1000s of thread colours, and the embroidery formats used to describe embroidery instructions mostly only have codes for about 100 colours or less (see colour in formats post).
But on the 500E it’s easy to change to the designer’s colours. (All the Bernina ‘big bobbin’ machines can do this.)
Of course you need the colour sheet which the designer should have provided.
As an example I’m using a fun Christmas dog design (Embroidery Library d6169).
Here’s the original design, in Madeira rayon thread.
I downloaded the design in .dst format. Some people think of .dst as near to a ’standard’ format, but there are many other formats which have both more colour and more embroidery information. I’m just using .dst here as an extreme example of the need to change colours. (See the colours in formats post to see how this design looks in the other formats that can be used on the 500E.)
Here is how the design appears on the 500E screen in .dst format.
This colouring can be extremely disconcerting if you’re not expecting it ! This does not mean something has gone seriously wrong, it’s just a result of the limitations of representing colours in embroidery formats.
.dst format describes where the stitches should go, when to change colour, and when to trim a jump thread. But it has no way of saying what the colour should be. So the 500E has supplied default colours.
The 500E has made the body of the dog in lime green.
One of the delights of embroidery is that you can of course make a lime green dog if that makes you happy 😀
But let’s say you want to use the designer’s colours.
It’s quickest to go through the colours in the order they’re stitched, as that is the order given on the 500E’s colour palette screen, in the colour bar on the Embroidery screen, and on the designer’s colour sheet.
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What to do
From the design overview screen (above), touch the colour palette tab in the inner right menu.
That gets to the first colour screen, which lists the colours used in the embroidery steps.
right – listing of the steps in the stitching sequence, with the colour used in each step.
. . . white box shows step 1 is selected.
left – image of design, with just the selected step colour shown.
Step 1 stitches some stripes in the loose part of the scarf, and has been given magenta colour.
The designer’s colour for this step is a dark green, Madeira Rayon 1369.
Touch the rotating icon at the right end of the selected colour bar.
That gets to the second colour screen, which is a thread colour data base screen. On the right there’s now :
– a thread brand menu below the navigation bar,
– a listing of all the colours in the brand chosen, below that.
[sorry this photo was taken in poor light, the grey dog is there on the left]
Use the brand menu arrows to click through to the Madeira Rayon brand.
Here is the same screen with the Madeira Rayon brand selected.
If the designer just gives colour names, not numbers :
Swipe through the colour bars, and choose a colour by touching its bar.
To change to the designer’s numbered colour :
Touch the search icon at top right, to access the number keypad.
Touch in the colour number (1369).
A green colour bar appears at left.
Touch the green colour bar to accept the colour.
The display goes back to the step colours screen, which now shows the designer’s colour for step 1, at both left and right.
The right side colour bar now both shows the colour visually and names the thread brand and colour number.
The left side shows the area stitched in Step 1, in the designer’s colour.
[I don’t know why there are different greens in the last 2 photos – these images have been through many processing steps on 500E, iPad and iMac. The important thing is the 500E knows the specific thread colour.]
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So now you can move on to change the colour used in step 2.
Select the second step by :
– click the arrow beneath the embroidery image,
– or touch the colour bar for Step 2 (for later steps – swipe through the step colour bars).
The designer’s colour for this step is Madeira Rayon 1048.
Touch the rotating icon on the colour bar for step 2.
The thread colour data base screen is already set to Madeira Rayon brand.
Touch the icon for the numeric keypad and touch in 1048.
Touch the colour bar to return to the step colours screen.
Select step 3.
And so on.
You can of course do all this to change any of the colours in any other format or design on the 500E.
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Work through all the steps, and you now have the designer’s colour choices correctly represented on your 500E.
This can be done quite quickly. I’m clumsy and make mistakes, but I can do a dozen colours in less than 5 minutes.
When you’ve finished, touch the Design Overview tab in the inner right menu.
And here he is, transformed into the designer’s colours 😀
The re-coloured design is represented on the 500E in the same way as any other edited design. And it can be saved, edited and combined like any other design.
Yet another of the amazing things the 500E can do for you !
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