Ink/Stitch aims to be a full-fledged embroidery digitizing platform based entirely on free, open source software. Our goal is to be approachable for hobbyists while also providing the power needed by professional digitizers.
I received a really wonderful christmas gift for a geeky programmer hacker: an [embroidery machine](http://www.brother-usa.com/homesewing/ModelDetail.aspx?ProductID=SE400). It's pretty much a CNC thread-bot... I just had to figure out how to design programs for it. The problem is, **all free embroidery design software seemed to be terrible**, especially when you add in the requirement of being able to run in Linux, my OS of choice.
I started off hacking on [inkscape-embroidery](http://www.jonh.net/~jonh/inkscape-embroidery/). It had some of the basic capabilities I needed, and I saw a lot of potential. I love the idea of using an existing, ultra-powerful SVG editor as the basis for an embroidery design suite.
The goal of Ink/Stitch is to provide a powerful embroidery digitizing platform for everyone **completely free**. I want to open up the field of embroidery design, making it approachable even for those who can't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on software. And I want folks like me, who love to combine code with art, to have an open, extensible, and approachable platform to hack on.
