Embroidery software for your business
Billy from Billy Landscaping is on the phone. He wants twelve more shirts, same as last time. Last time was 2022. Somewhere on your computer is the file you stitched for him, under a name that made sense to you then, in a folder you have reorganized twice since.
You know the feeling. You say “let me dig that out and call you back,” and then you lose forty minutes of a working day to it.
Unzip2Stitch is where that stops. One place with everything you own and everything you have ever stitched, with a picture of each one, searchable by customer, by job, by year, by hoop size, by format.
Find the job, not the folder
Your files stay exactly where they are — nothing is moved or displaced. What changes is that you can see them. Every design becomes a card with its picture, its size, its stitch count and the formats it came in. Name your files the way most shops do, with the customer in the name, and typing Billy brings back every job you ever stitched for him.
Favorites for the ones you reach for weekly. Recently used for the job you had open yesterday. Collections for a customer who keeps coming back.
One habit that pays for itself
Because the search works on what the file is called, the names you give things today are what you will be searching in five years. Most shops land on something like this:
Order 123 Billys Landscaping LC
Order number, customer, placement. That is all it takes. Type Billy and every job he has ever had comes back. Type 123 and you are straight at the one. Type LC and you have every left chest you have ever stitched, which is handy more often than you would think.
If your files are already named something less helpful, you do not have to go back and fix them — start with the next one. The order board carries the customer name separately anyway, so from here on you are covered both ways.
Paperwork that goes out to the floor
Print a production sheet and it carries what the person at the machine actually needs: a picture of the design, its true size, the hoop, the thread order and the stitch count. Print a job ticket to go with the garments. Everything prints at true size, so what is on the paper is what comes off the machine.
If you make patches, there is a patch sheet that lays them out for you.
Name tags, patches and anything you need twenty of
Create Array lays a design out in rows and columns with the spacing you choose, so a sheet of twenty name tags is one hooping and one file instead of twenty of each. Add a border, add a basting box, and send it.
Thread you can actually buy
Match to thread brand turns the colors on screen into real spools you can order, so the sample matches the run and the run matches the reorder in eight months. Group font colors turns twenty thread changes on a lettered design into one.
Every machine in the shop
Save in the format each machine reads — PES, DST, JEF, VP3, EXP, XXX and more. Batch export does a whole set at once rather than one file at a time, which matters when the job is forty pieces and two machines.
The order board: who it was for, and what you stitched
This is the part built for Billy.
Start an order straight from the design and it fills itself in — the name, the stitch count, the colors, the hoop, the formats, and a picture. You only add the customer part. A snapshot of the design is saved with the order, so the job still shows its picture in two years even if the file has been moved since.
Each order holds:
- Order number — your own reference, or the one from your store
- Customer — who the job is for
- The design — pulled in automatically, with its picture
- Quantity and due date
- Notes — thread colors, placement, packaging, anything that matters next time
Status moves New → In progress → Done with a click, and the board lists newest first so today’s work is at the top. Click into any order to change any of it in place. Print a job ticket — one tidy page with the picture and the details — to clip to the garments or hand to whoever is at the machine.
So when Billy rings in 2028, you are not hunting a folder. You are looking at his order, his file, his thread notes and what you charged him, with a picture of the thing you made.
It is optional. There is a Show Orders switch in Settings — turn it off and the whole feature tucks away, which is what people who only stitch for themselves will want.
Your library, backed up
Back up the whole library and restore it — onto a new computer, or after the day you would rather not think about. Tidy up finds duplicate copies and tells you how many it found before it touches anything.
If your designs are your stock, this is your insurance.
What it costs
$179, once. Not a monthly fee, not a seat, not a tier you climb. You buy it and it is yours, including the updates that follow. Runs natively on Mac and Windows — the same program and the same updates on the same day, so it does not matter what is on the desk.
One job you did not have to hunt for pays for it.
Honest about what it is not
It does not digitize artwork from scratch. If a customer hands you a logo that has never been stitched, that is hand work and it takes years to learn to do properly — I do that here as a service, next business day.
And it is in early access. It is stable and does what is described here, and it is still growing. You pay $179 instead of $249, you keep it, and you keep the updates.
You are not buying from a stranger
I am Lorna. For eight years I have answered embroidery questions every day in Embroidery for Beginners, my Facebook group of more than 50,000 members. Unzip2Stitch was built out of what I watched people there struggle with.
My name is on the digitizing, on the software and on that group. If something goes wrong, you know exactly where to find me — and so do fifty thousand other embroiderers.