How to use a Brother Innovis 4000D Video Series

These videos describe how to use your Brother Innovis 4000D including loading designs from USB, resizing designs, skipping forward and backward and rotating designs. There are also general videos on how to download designs from the internet, copying the designs to your USB and changing the thread on a single-needle embroidery machine.  

These videos will probably work with many different Brother embroidery machines especially those in the earlier Innovis line. A lot of these machines use the same software. Even if you have a different Brother machine, these videos could help give you ideas on how to perform these tasks on your machine.

See below for links to each of the videos in this series

How to Load a Pattern from a USB stick

Rotating and Resizing Embroidery Designs

Learn how to rotate or resize a design once it's loaded in the embroidery machine with our video tutorials.   

How to Resize a Pattern on an Embroidery Machine

If the design is large, it may not be able to be resized.  Also, embroidery machines can only resize any patterns a small amount.  The more the design is resized, it may not stitch correctly.  Even small resizing can cause issues with the stitching of the design.  I have had success with resizing designs a small amount.

A reminder though, never resize an in the hoop design.  These designs stitch out differently and resizing could cause them to not stitch correctly.

How to Rotate a Design (Pattern) on an Embroidery Machine

Keep in mind that some designs cannot be rotated since they may be too large.  Rotating a design may be necessary for your stitch out or pattern you would like to stitch.

Learn to Skip Forward and Backward stitches in a design on an Embroidery Machine

While stitching a pattern, it may be necessary to back up a few stitches.  This is helpful when the thread breaks while stitching.  This video will demonstrate how to jump back or forward 1, 10, or 100 stitches.  It also discusses jumping forward or backward through the threads.

How to Combine Patterns on an Embroidery Machine

If you are adding a monogram or lettering to the design, combining the separate letters into one single pattern is very helpful.  Watch the video above to learn how to combine multiple patterns into one.

How to change the thread color on an embroidery machine

Learn how the machine stops and requests a change of thread color when machine embroidering.  Every design has different thread colors and stops for changes.  This video will show how this works and also how easy it is to thread a Brother Innovis 4000D machine.  Even if you have a different embroidery machine, the stops for color changes are built into the embroidery design.

How to copy a pattern to USB and load (Innovis 4000D)

I prefer to use a USB stick to load patterns onto my machine.  To use the USB, the embroidery design file must be copied onto the USB stick. The video above will demonstrate how to copy a file to a USB drive.

Please note, the Brother Innovis 4000D machine cannot load large USB drives.  If you have the upgrade, it can load up to 2 GB USB drive only.  In today's market, a 2 GB drive is very small.  If you do not have the upgrade, I believe you are limited to a 1 GB drive.  But, don't be worried, 1 GB holds a massive number of embroidery designs!  It holds way more than you would ever want to keep on the drive.

I find that using a small USB stick loads within a few seconds. These are my favorite USB sticks and they are only 512 MB in size.  A 2GB USB drive may take up to a minute just to load the patterns, no matter how few you have on the drive.  So, getting a smaller USB drive really helps because it loads much faster.

Also, I do not keep a lot of patterns on my USB drive as it becomes hard to find the pattern I want to stitch when there are many patterns on the drive.  They all look very similar in those little icons on the screen, so the fewer the better!

How to download and save a pattern

Are you unsure how to download an embroidery design you purchased and save it on your computer?  Watch the video above for many tips and step-by-step instructions.  These instructions can be used for any embroidery designs free or purchased.

How to clean your machine

Cleaning your embroidery machine is important to keep it in top working order.  Watch the video above to get some tips on cleaning your machine.

If you are interested in purchasing an embroidery machine, read some information and recommendations in our post, Machine Embroidering a T-Shirt Tutorial.  We also have an affiliate link below with some machines available on Amazon. 

Frequently Asked Questions:

How do you turn on the Grid Lines on the Embroidery Screen?

The gridlines are controlled through the "settings" screen. To access the settings, click the button at the bottom left of the screen that looks like a piece of paper.

The screen will open up with three tabs: Sewing, General, and Embroidery. 

Click on the Embroidery tab.  To change the grid in the display, click the arrows under "Embroidery Frame Display" to toggle through the many options until you find the gridlines.

Click close to exit the screen and you should see the gridlines on your display.