2stitchOrganizer Tutorial

This guide is for 2stitchOrganizer 2.0.4 and newer. If you’re on an older version, download the latest to make sure everything matches up.

Choosing your language

2stitchOrganizer is available in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese. When you first run it, 2stitchOrganizer picks the language your computer is set to — and falls back to English if your language isn’t on the list.

You can switch language any time from the preferences (menu: File → Preferences on Windows, 2stitchOrganizer → Settings on Mac). The new language takes effect once you restart the app.

Adding your designs

The first thing we need to do is show 2stitchOrganizer where your designs live. Don’t worry — your files stay right where they are on your computer. 2stitchOrganizer only reads them. It never moves, copies, edits or deletes any of your design files.

There are two easy ways to add a folder:

• Drag and drop. Open the folder on your computer (Finder on a Mac, File Explorer on Windows), then drag it onto the left side panel of 2stitchOrganizer.
• Use the Add folder button. Click Add folder in the toolbar at the top and pick the folder from the dialog.

The first time you add a folder, give 2stitchOrganizer a moment to read through your files and build the preview images. A couple hundred designs are done in a blink; several thousand can take a while. Once it’s finished, you’ll see all your designs in the center view:

Keeping your library up to date

Got new designs? Just save them into a folder 2stitchOrganizer already knows about, then click the Rescan button in the toolbar. It’ll spot anything new and add it to your library. You only add the folder itself once.

Rescan also works the other way round: if designs have disappeared from your folders — say you deleted them, or an external drive isn’t plugged in — 2stitchOrganizer will notice. Before it removes anything from your library, it’ll show you a warning and ask you to confirm, so your tags and notes can’t vanish by accident. Read the message carefully and only click through if you’re sure. (The warning dialog is new in 2.0.4 — on older versions, Rescan removed missing designs silently.)

Moved or renamed your library folder?

A quick tip that can save you a lot of grief. If you’ve moved your whole library to a new drive, or renamed the top folder, don’t just remove the old folder and add the new one — you’d lose all the tags and notes you’ve added to your designs.

The safe way:

1. Make a backup first — belt and braces, in case anything goes sideways.
2. Add the new folder. Drag it in, or use the Add folder button.
3. Wait while 2stitchOrganizer reads the files. It’ll recognize the designs and keep your tags and notes attached.
4. Then remove the old folder from the list.

Working with the center view

The center view is where all your designs live once 2stitchOrganizer has read your folders. It’s where you’ll spend most of your time — browsing, selecting, and sending designs off to your machine. A few things worth knowing before we get into organizing.

Selecting designs

A lot of what you’ll do in 2stitchOrganizer starts with picking which designs you want to work with — tagging them, adding them to favorites, copying to your USB stick, or including them in a PDF catalog. Selecting works the same way everywhere.

Click a design in the center view to select it. Then:

• Hold ⌘ (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) while clicking more designs to pick several at once.
• Rubber-band selection — click on an empty spot in the center view and drag. A rectangle appears; everything inside it gets selected.
• Select all — press ⌘+A (Mac) or Ctrl+A (Windows), or use Select All from the menu. This grabs everything currently visible — so if you’ve filtered by tag, folder or file type first, only those designs get selected.

Once you have a selection, you can tag it, mark it as favorite, transfer it to your machine, or export it to a PDF catalog — all covered in the sections below.

Taking a closer look

Double-click any design in the center view to open a big preview — handy for checking the stitch detail before you send a file to your machine.

Opening a design in Finder or File Explorer

Sometimes you want to get to the actual file on your computer — maybe to copy it somewhere, attach it to an email, or double-check what’s in the folder. Right-click any design (or ⌥ Option-click on a Mac) and pick Reveal in Finder (Mac) or Reveal in Explorer (Windows) from the context menu.

Nothing showing up?

If the center view is empty, it’s usually one of these:

• You haven’t added a folder yet.
• The folder you added doesn’t contain any embroidery files 2stitchOrganizer recognizes.
• A filter is switched on and hiding your designs. We’ll cover filters just below.

Organizing your designs

Once your library is loaded up, 2stitchOrganizer gives you a few different ways to make sense of it all. You can sort and find your designs by:

• Folder — the folders on your computer, the way you already have them
• Tags — your own labels, like Christmas or Kids
• Favorites — a heart icon for the designs you love most
• File type — PES, DST, JEF, and so on
• Size — hide anything that won’t fit your hoop
• Text search — to find designs by their name or notes

You don’t have to use all of these. Most people start with folders and add tags once their library grows. Use whichever feels natural.

Folders

2stitchOrganizer mirrors the folder structure on your computer in the left sidebar. If you’ve already sorted your designs into folders by theme, holiday, or designer, you’re halfway there.

Click any folder in the sidebar to see just the designs inside it (and its subfolders).

A couple of things worth knowing:

• You can’t rearrange folders from inside 2stitchOrganizer. Since we never touch your original files, any renaming, creating or moving of folders needs to happen in Finder (Mac) or File Explorer (Windows). After you’ve tidied things up there, click Rescan and 2stitchOrganizer will pick up the new structure.
• There’s no “show everything” view. The folder sidebar shows one folder and its subfolders at a time — so if you’ve added two separate libraries (say, an internal drive and an external one), you can only browse one at a time. If you’d like a single overview of your whole collection, keep everything under one main folder, or use tags and favorites, which work across folders.

Filtering by file type

Embroidery designs often come bundled in several different file formats, all in the same folder — the same design might be there as a .pes, .dst, .exp, .jef and more. That’s because each machine brand reads its own format, and designers usually include a handful so the pack works for everyone.

By default, 2stitchOrganizer shows every file, which can make your library look a bit cluttered — the same design showing up five times over. You probably only need one format: the one your own machine reads. For example, PES for a Brother, DST for many commercial machines, or JEF for a Janome.

Use the file-type selector in the filter bar to pick the format you want to see. 2stitchOrganizer will hide the others so you only see one copy of each design. Nothing gets deleted — the extra files stay safely on your computer, just out of view.

A small tip: don’t delete the extra formats from your computer. They take hardly any space, and the day you switch to a different machine, you’ll be glad you still have them.

Favorites

Favorites are the quickest way to mark the designs you love the most — the go-to projects, the classics, the ones you keep coming back to.

Hover your mouse over any design in the center view and a small heart icon will appear in the top-left corner of the preview ①. Click the heart to mark it as a favorite; click again to unmark.

When you want to browse just your favorites, click the heart in the filter bar at the top ②. 2stitchOrganizer will hide everything else and show only your marked designs. Click the heart once more to go back to the full view.

Tags

Tags are where 2stitchOrganizer really shines. Think of them as little labels you can stick onto your designs — as many as you like, and the same design can have several at once.

Tags solve a problem that folders can’t. Imagine a Santa Claus design. Does it belong in the Christmas folder? Winter? Holidays? Vintage? With folders, you have to pick one and then remember where you put it. With tags, you can give Santa all of them:

• Winter
• Holidays
• Christmas
• People
• Vintage

Then whenever you’re looking for something Christmas-y, or winter-y, or vintage, Santa will show up in every one of those lists.

Adding a tag

Select one or more designs in the center view. In the right sidebar, use the tag drop-down ① to either pick an existing tag or type a new name and press Enter to create it on the spot. No need to plan your tag list in advance — just add them as you go.

Browsing by tag

Your tags are listed in the left sidebar ②. Click any tag to see only the designs that carry it. You can only filter by one tag at a time — there’s no way to combine several.

At the top of the tag list you’ll find two special entries:

• Show all — brings back every design, regardless of tags.
• Show untagged — shows only designs that don’t have any tags yet. Handy when you’re working through your library and want to catch anything you haven’t labeled.

Removing a tag

The tags on a selected design appear in the Tags section of the right sidebar. Click the little × next to any tag ③ to take it off the design.

When you’ve picked more than one design

Select several designs at once and the Tags section in the right sidebar shows the tags across your whole selection:

• Fully black tags are on every design you’ve selected.
• Grey tags are only on some of them.

Handy for spotting the odd one out — if a tag should be on every design in a group but shows up grey, you know one’s missing it.

Refreshing the center view

Heads up: when you add or remove a tag, the center view doesn’t update on its own — you’ll still see all the designs that were there before. To bring it in sync, click the refresh icon in the filter bar. Worth remembering, especially when you’re tidying your library and filtering by tag at the same time.

Managing your tags

Above the tag list there’s a small toolbar with buttons for looking after your tag list itself:

• Create a new tag without having to assign it to a design first — useful when you want to plan your tag list in advance.
• Rename a tag. The change applies everywhere the tag is used, so your designs stay correctly labeled.
• Delete a tag from the whole library. Your designs aren’t affected — they just lose that label.
• Remove unused tags in one go. A quick tidy-up after renaming or reorganizing.
• Show all — a shortcut for the — show all files — entry at the top of the list, for when you want to see everything again.

Notes

Sometimes there are little things you want to remember about a design that don’t fit anywhere else. Questions like:

• Where did I buy this?
• Did the stitch-out have any problems?
• What license does it have — can I sell what I make?
• Which stabilizer worked best?

The Notes field in the right sidebar is the perfect place for all of that. Select a design, click into the notes field, and type whatever you want to remember. The field grows as you write, so you can jot down a quick line or a whole paragraph.

And here’s the best bit: your notes are searchable. Use the Search text field in the filter bar to find a note across your whole library — perfect for when you want to remember “which design was it I bought from that lovely Etsy shop…”

Filtering by size

Every embroidery machine has a maximum hoop size, and there’s nothing worse than falling for a design only to find out it’s too big. The Max. size field in the filter bar hides anything bigger than you tell it, so everything you see will actually fit.

Type in the biggest dimension your hoop can handle and 2stitchOrganizer takes care of the rest.

You can work in inches or centimeters — switch between them in the preferences (menu: File → Preferences on Windows, 2stitchOrganizer → Settings on Mac).

Transferring designs to your embroidery machine

Most embroidery machines read designs from a USB stick. A brand-new stick out of the pack is usually already formatted in a way both your computer and your machine can read, so you can use it straight away.

Select the designs you want to copy, plug in the USB stick, then click Transfer to machine in the toolbar. Pick your stick from the list and press Copy.

Give it a moment — depending on how many designs you’re copying and how fast your USB stick is, it can take anywhere from a couple of seconds to a few minutes. When it’s done, eject the stick, pop it into your machine, and you’re ready to stitch.

A couple of things worth knowing:

• All designs go to the root of the USB stick. 2stitchOrganizer doesn’t create subfolders — everything lands in one place, which is what most embroidery machines expect.
• Filenames are left as they are. 2stitchOrganizer doesn’t rename or shorten anything, so make sure your designs are named in a way your machine can read. Some older machines struggle with long names or special characters — if yours is picky, rename the files in Finder or File Explorer first, then click Rescan in 2stitchOrganizer.
• File formats aren’t converted. Make sure the files you’re transferring are in the format your machine reads (PES for Brother, DST for many commercial machines, JEF for Janome, and so on). If you only see the wrong format, check whether the original design pack includes your format too — most do — and filter by file type to find it.

Backups and moving your library

All those tags, notes and favorites you’ve added are precious — they’re the real work you’ve put into your library. 2stitchOrganizer stores them in its own small database alongside your design files, and it’s well worth backing them up regularly. Make it a habit — once a month, or any time you’ve done a big tagging session.

What a backup does (and doesn’t) include

A backup saves your tags, notes and favorites into a single .tsb file. That’s it:

• Included: your tags, notes, favorites, and the tag list itself.
• Not included: your actual design files, and the preview images (those get rebuilt automatically when 2stitchOrganizer reads your designs).

This is important: a .tsb file on its own is not a full backup of your library. You also need to keep your design files safe, however you normally back up your computer — Time Machine, an external drive, cloud storage, whatever works for you.

Think of it this way: your design files are the photos, and the .tsb file is the album layout. Without the photos, the album is just empty pages.

Making a backup

From the menu, choose File → Create backup. 2stitchOrganizer will ask you where to save the file and give it a .tsb extension. Pick a spot where you’ll remember to find it — right next to your design folder is a good choice, or wherever your regular backups live.

2stitchOrganizer doesn’t make backups automatically, so it really is down to you to remember. A good rule of thumb: if you’ve spent an afternoon tagging and would be sad to lose that work, back it up before you close 2stitchOrganizer.

.tsb files are small, so there’s no reason not to keep a few — this week’s, last month’s, whatever gives you peace of mind.

Restoring a backup

From the menu, choose File → Restore backup and open your .tsb file. 2stitchOrganizer will load your tags, notes and favorites back in.

If your design files are in exactly the same spot they were when you made the backup, you’re done — everything reconnects automatically.

If you’ve moved them — to a new drive, a new computer, or just a different folder — you’ll need to point 2stitchOrganizer at the new location. The safest order is:

1. Restore the backup first (as above).
2. Add the new folder — drag it onto the left side panel, or use the Add folder button. Wait while 2stitchOrganizer reads through the files; your tags and notes will reconnect themselves to the designs it finds.
3. Remove the old folder entry from the list.

Doing it in this order makes sure your tags and notes attach to the right designs. If you remove the old folder first, you risk breaking the connection.

Moving to a new computer

Setting up 2stitchOrganizer on a new computer? It’s a three-step job:

1. On the old computer, create a backup (File → Create backup) and save the .tsb file somewhere you can move it over — a USB stick, cloud drive, or email will do. .tsb files work on both Mac and Windows, so it doesn’t matter which you’re coming from or going to.
2. Copy your design files to the new computer too. (If they’re on an external drive, just plug it in.)
3. On the new computer, install 2stitchOrganizer, then File → Restore backup, open the .tsb, and add your design folder. Your tags, notes and favorites come along for the ride.

A little aside for the technically curious: .tsb files and the internal database are in a plain, open format (XML) — nothing locked away or hidden. If you ever want to do something unusual with your library data, it’s all there for the reading.

Saving your library as a PDF catalog

Sometimes it’s useful to have a visual list of your designs — to flip through away from the computer, share with a friend, or keep alongside a gift of embroidered items. 2stitchOrganizer can turn any slice of your library into a neatly laid-out PDF, with a preview, filename and size for every design.

From the menu, choose File → Save as PDF…. 2stitchOrganizer will open a small dialog with a few choices.

What to include

Pick which designs end up in the PDF:

• All designs — your whole library.
• Currently visible designs — whatever’s showing in the center view right now. Handy when you’ve filtered by folder, tag or file type — the PDF will match exactly what you see on screen.
• Selected designs — only the designs you’ve picked in the center view. Great for sharing a curated set (see Selecting designs).

The dialog shows the number of designs next to each option, so you’ll know how big the PDF will be before you start.

Page size

Choose A4 or US Letter, depending on where you are in the world — or what fits in your printer tray.

What the PDF looks like

Each page is a neat grid of designs showing the preview, the filename, and the size of each. A header tells you which folder the designs came from, and the footer has the page number and the date.

Click Save PDF, pick a spot to save the file, and you’re done.

Printing a catalog

Prefer paper? The print flow is exactly the same as the PDF one — just choose File → Print catalog… from the menu instead.

You’ll see the same dialog with the same choices (all designs, currently visible, or selected; A4 or US Letter), and the same neat grid layout. Click Print, pick your printer, and off it goes.