How to Use the Piping Stitch Type in eXPerience 8 -Level Advanced

Introduction
The Piping stitch is a specialized fill type available in eXPerience 8. When applied, the software scans the shape of your object and automatically generates inner contour lines. This creates a beautifully natural flow and a lighter texture, making it the perfect choice for digitizing organic shapes such as petals, leaves, and feathers.

Follow this step-by-step guide to learn how to apply, customize, and decorate your designs using the Piping fill.

Step 1: Applying the Piping Fill

There are two simple ways to apply the Piping stitch type to your designs:

• Method A (For Existing Objects): Select an already digitized object on your workspace, navigate to the Embroidery Properties panel, and choose Piping from the fill types.
• Method B (For New Objects): First, select the Piping type in the Embroidery Properties panel. Then, use your digitizing tools to draw a new shape or insert a ready-made one.

Step 2: Customizing Basic Properties (Density & Length)

Once applied, you can fine-tune the Piping fill to suit your specific project.

• Density: This defines the distance between two consecutive stitch lines moving in the same direction. A lower Density value results in tighter stitching and fuller coverage, while a higher Density offers lighter coverage.
• Length: This option dictates the distance between the needle penetration points along each row.

💡 Useful Tip – Fabric Settings: Your Density and Length defaults are tied to your chosen fabric. If you change the fabric type in eXPerience 8, these properties will adjust automatically to ensure optimal stitch quality!

💡 Useful Tip – Texture & Stitch Count: Carefully adjusting your Density allows you to create beautiful textures and highlight certain areas of the design while keeping your overall stitch count remarkably low.

Step 3: Managing Irregular Shapes & Creating 3D Effects

Piping is incredibly versatile for irregular shapes that feature both wide and narrow sections.

• Using Short/Long: By default, the software adds shorter lines to fill in wider areas. This intelligently prevents excessive, dense stitching from building up in the narrowest parts of your shape.
• Creating a 3D Effect: If you disable the Short/Long option (allowing stitch lines to run continuously from one side to the other) and purposefully increase your Density value, you can create a highly realistic 3D, raised effect on many shapes.

Step 4: Controlling Stitch Flow

You can manipulate exactly how the Piping contours sit inside your shape using the Stitch Flow tool.

• Divide and Direction Lines: Piping objects support multiple divide and direction lines, giving you complete control over how stitches flow through different sections of a single object.
• Custom Directions: You can assign individual directions to each divided area for highly precise results.
• Spiral Layouts: Generate a mesmerizing spiral layout inside a closed shape simply by adding point directions directly at the center of the shape.

Step 5: Decorating with Style Stitches and Patterns

Take your Piping fills to the next level by applying decorative textures.

• Applying Style Stitches: Expand the Stitches list in your properties to find a large collection of decorative styles. Apply any style with a single click. (To remove a style, simply press the “x” icon).
• How Styles Scale: Think of a style as a rectangular block. When a style is applied, Density defines the distance between the centers of every two rows of the repeated stitches, and Length defines the distance between the first and last needle point of each style in a row. If you adjust the Length, the Density updates automatically to maintain proportions.
• Applying Patterns: Similarly, you can expand the Patterns list and click to apply unique pattern layouts. You can even combine different Stitches and Patterns for entirely unique designs!

💡 Useful Tip – Minimum Lengths: Keep in mind that styles have a minimum length constraint (typically 5 mm). Because of this, reducing the length below this threshold may not visually change the result on your screen.

💡 Useful Tip – Resetting Defaults: Made too many adjustments? At any point, you can right-click on the Piping icon and choose Reset to return all properties to their default settings.

Step 6: Setting Fixing and Locking Options

To ensure your Piping stitches don’t unravel, you need to manage how the machine secures the thread at the start and end of the object.

• Auto (Default): The software intelligently decides whether fixing/locking stitches are technically necessary based on the object type, stitch density, and overall sequence.
• Never: No fixing stitches will be added. This forces a “soft start” which can be useful for certain delicate fabrics or blending techniques.
• Always: Fixing/locking stitches will inevitably be forced at the start/end of the object, ensuring maximum security.