Tech Sunday - Basic Optimizing

Today we are going to take a look at optimizing your designs.  This time I am going to jump right in and assume that you have a design that you are ready to sew and just need to optimize it.  I created a 12 Branch Flake with ends that are not joined.

From the picture, above you can tell that the design starts and stops in the center and that there is a jump stitch, represented by the light blue circle at the end of each spoke.  In this case, I want to join the ends of the spokes.  Because this design is pretty basic, it would be a candidate for just the Remove All Jump-stitches button.  However, I think it is really important that you know different ways to get the software to do things.  

Look at the spoke in the 3 o'clock position, in the picture above.  Notice that the Yellow 1 and 2 circles are both on that one spoke.  If I tap on the blue dot it will remove the jump stitches and create a straight line between the end of the first line, with the red dot, and the beginning of the second line, the green dot.  

Once you have done this it will renumber your lines.  See that the entire 3 o'clock spoke is now labeled 1.  Then you are ready to go to the next spoke.

Notice that the entire first line is highlighted.  This is how you change the stitching direct for a single line.  If you click directly on the line (not on the number) it will change the stitching direction of that line.  So you would get this...

If you click directly on the line again, it will change the direction back.

If you keep clicking the blue circles it will join the tips.  In the picture below, I have one jump-stitch left to remove.  

Being able to control the direction of individual lines makes it possible to get continuous designs.  Remember that you can also click directly on the yellow numbers and that will allow you to change the order that they will stitch out.  When I am working on a complicated design, I will go back and forth between renumber and removing jump-stitches.  As soon as I get two lines in the order I need, I remove the jump-stitches and then start reordering the lines again.  Time to go play!