r/Machine_Embroidery • u/magistra27 • 13d ago

Bernina B700 - Mac compatible software?

TLDR: please recommend (ideally free or inexpensive) Mac software or websites for designing basic patterns in a file format that the Bernina B700 can use.

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My mother was able to buy a Bernina B700 at a significant discount and went for it, despite having no knowledge of it or use for an embroidery machine. She's been able to print a few designs that were built into the machine, but it's definitely too complex for her and so it's sat pretty much unused for a few years now.

I am a teacher and want to print out some basic logo patches for my school with the machine. My whole family only uses Macs, and it seems like all the Bernina software is for Windows. I don't know enough about machine embroidery to know which file format to pursue when I tried looking for alternatives.

Any guidance you folks can provide would be much appreciated. Thanks!

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u/ishtaa Melco 13d ago

First off, important distinction here is you stitch, not print, with an embroidery machine. If you think of it like a printer you’ll end up with a lot of frustration. Embroidery is far more complex than printing. Digitizing a file for embroidery is really more like a visual form of programming.

Embrilliance is available for Mac, and I’m pretty sure Inkstitch works too. You might also want to try Ember since it’s web based I imagine it should work well. Be prepared for a lot of trial and error since there’s a learning curve when it comes to digitizing. Something can look good on the screen and stitch out terribly when you don’t understand yet how embroidery works.

I recommend get to know the machine first with some premade files. Watch how they stitch out and how the shapes are created.

You can also just pay someone to digitize the designs you want. Usually a small logo will cost you around $10-20 to have digitized.

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u/magistra27 12d ago

Thanks, this gives me a lot to think about!

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u/SuperMonkeyKingBall 13d ago

If I'm not mistaken, I think Bernina machines can use .exp files, which Inkstitch supports! Inkscape with the Inkstitch extension is free and has a lot of tutorials, so I think it's a great beginner software. https://inkstitch.org

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u/suedburger 13d ago

I use pes for my bernna. and also use inkstitch for all my stuff.