How do you organise your design collection? I have a confession to make. My design collection is chaos. I have folders inside folders ins...

Alice ADMIN General Chat

2026-10-12 08:39:54

How do you organise your design collection?
I have a confession to make. My design collection is chaos.
I have folders inside folders inside folders. I have files called “new folder (3)” and “alphabet final FINAL”. I have the same design saved in five places, because I couldn’t find it the first four times. I even have an embroidery deduper that’s meant to sort all this out, and I can’t find that on my computer either!
So I’m hoping some of you are more organised than me and willing to share your secrets.
Do you sort by theme, by designer, by format, or by date?
Do you keep everything on your computer, or on a USB or external drive?
Do you rename files, or leave them as they come?
Do you use any software to keep track of it all?
And be honest, how many designs do you think you have?

Tell me your system, or tell me your chaos. Either way I’ll feel better!

1 reaction

Dawn 2026-10-12 10:54:07

I rename each design I download with the designer name like this AllSorts_chicken. Each year I have a folder called 'Embroidery 2026' then subfolders for each month like 2026-01. Since you are renaming each file as you download them they are already in alphabetical order by designer. My computer is backed up constantly by IDrive which I subscribe to. I also use SewCat to catalog all my designs.
- Alice 2026-10-12 12:11:17
  
  If you had a tool that could do all of that for you, would you use it?
SUZE 2026-10-12 22:48:34

Hi Alice. I keep all the given names and add extra info on at the end. I store in folders by style and subject. Main folder: Christmas; subfolders: trees, stars, snowflakes, carols, Victorian, modern, etc. Just waiting for new storage. If I had my time again, I might group by designer or web portal especially as, after 20yrs some folks have had to close their sites for various reasons. so finding the source for attribution is getting quite difficult.
Alice 2026-10-13 09:56:59

Thank you Ladies, After I asked this question it occurred to me that an app to do all that would be handy. I have started working on it.
Diane 2026-10-13 10:55:40

Oh my gosh, Alice. I know I would love to have an app that actually made sense. Thank you for always aiming to help all of us that struggle at these things.
- Alice 2026-10-13 11:19:16
  
  I am hoping it will make sense, I need it myself.
Jan 2026-10-14 12:11:05

I have my designs divided into folders by subject... Christmas, Hearts, Gnomes, Fonts etc... I do have sub-folders in Fonts cuz I list them by name and designer... Even vinyl stuff has a few sub-folders such as key-rings, bookmarks etc...
Shushana 2026-10-15 04:17:20

A quick Google search suggests these apps: several dedicated embroidery design organizer apps exist, with top options including StitchBuddy, SewCat, Embrilliance, Bernina ArtLink, and Ink/Stitch, all offering features like searchable catalogs, previews, tagging, and batch conversion. These tools are consistently ranked among the best for managing large embroidery libraries, according to multiple 2026 software reviews. And 2stitchOrganizer.

Personally I have folders with genres. When I download I add tags to the name then organize by genre. However, I used to use a word document and put information about each design in it and it was easy to search but that was a long time ago. Now my problem is changing computers and not having all the files in one place. I put them in DropBox but the old computer had an issue and didn't up load them all. I'm currently in a mess with using the new computer (desktop is synced to old computer) and filing on the old computer. It's not sustainable and I need to fix it.

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