Stitch effects are quick and easy in Wilcom Hatch!  Some effects add interest in dimension to your embroidery, but also add a wow factor to your designs.  The florentine effect adds so much to your embroidery work – its an amazing stitch effect that can be created quickly and easily.

So what are florentine stitches?  Florentine stitches are similar to contour stitches, but you can use different stitch types to get the same effect – so you can use embossed fill, motif fill and many other stitches to get this awesome effect.  The effect is that you can contour the stitches along a guideline – for example a plain circle – and add some special effects.  You can even modify or change the curve of the florentine stitches quickly and easily using the reshape tool!  You can reshape the curve to get exactly the effect that you are looking for quickly and easily.  So what do florentine stitches look like?  here is an example using the embossed stitches:

If you look closely at the embossed design, the florentine effect is shaping the design in a couple of ways – first it is changing the size of the design from the top to the bottom – the circles on the top portion of the embroidery are larger and wider than the stitches at the bottom.  Also the embroidery has a contour curve to the design too.  So two elements make this stitch effect really incredible!  Here is another example using a motif stitch:

The motif stitch is not up and down and straight across the circle:  it bends around in a curve giving it depth and dimension and the size of the motif stitches change as well – the ones farther away from the beginning of the effect are larger, and the ones at the bottom are smaller  – so this effect works two ways, even on motif stitches.  Some of the motif stitches have a better, more dramatic effect with the florentine effect added, so do try some different motif stitches and embossed stitches until you get a stitch style that gets your attention!

Remember of course that will all motif stitches and embossed stitches, you have to make the design large enough for the differences in size to show up – if you don’t see the above effect very well, then just try re-sizing your design element and see if it shows up more.

check out this quit tip video and see the florentine effect in action!!