Hi, all. I'm monkeying around in Inkscape in hope of creating designs I can use with my quilting robotics -- it's a system that uses .PLT files to stitch out designs. It works very well with designs I've purchased, but there's something I'm missing in the designs I create myself.

I need to create designs that consist of one continuous line; otherwise the machine starts and stops and tries to stitch each one separately. I thought simply having different parts of the design be joined in Inkscape would do the trick, but no luck; my string of pearls is still sewing out each...individual...bead.

I've created this design by using the Pattern Along Path tool to place repeats of a circle along an arc. I export it as an .SVG and then convert to .PLT, and there's no problem with the format. It works almost as it should. But you'll see it stitches each circle one by one, with a line of stitching then traveling to the start of the next circle; purchased patterns sew the sequence out in a serpentine, with no extra stops or starts.

What am I missing? I suspect I need to tell Inkscape somehow to make everything in the design one path -- but I'm not sure how to do that. Help, please! Thanks.

Hi. Have you seen the forum below? I think they can better answer or assist you, since embroidery is their focus. Check them out.

https://inkscape.org/forums/embroidery/

When I understand correctly it´s more kinda snake like line than a series of separate circles.

Can you check if the attached file works? It´s made from half-circles top+bottom - mirrored and connected at one side to make it 1 single continuous path.

Here is another one. I created the pattern (red) and repeated it using pattern along path (blue).

Thanks, all! I'm going to download the patterns shared above and give them a try today. I appreciate the help.

Progress! Some efforts to share. @polygon, yours worked perfectly. How did you do it? Did you use Pattern Along Path with the half-circles, stringing one half along the top of the curve and the other along the bottom?

@aero, that only sort of worked. The quilting software wants to pause between each set of two pearls. So it's like it's sewing one infinity symbol...pausing...and then waiting for me to affirm that I'm ready for the machine to sew the next one...on down the line. Basically the infinity symbols seem to be individual entities still.

I see. The Live Path Effect, Pattern Along Path do have a fuse nearby ends setting you may then find useful.

I used the Pattern along path extension instead because the LPE seems broken here in 1.2 Beta on Windows.

This is how I go about it:

Fabulous, thanks so much! I appreciate the time you took to sketch this all out. Maybe I can take this and run with it!

Soooooo the chain of pearls advice worked great -- thank you! The trouble I'm encountering now is that placing it along a path shrinks it too much for my use. I'm attaching a couple of screenshots that illustrate what happens when I attempt to place a single copy and repeated ones. The circles just get really small. I don't see anywhere I can scale the pattern as it appears on the path...Am I missing that somewhere?

What I'm aiming for is seven circles or so along a 90 degree arc. I wouldn't have expected it to be complicated! But here we are.

I´d measure the length of the curve with Extension->Visualise Path->Measure Path to get the real world size. Then draw the pattern to match the length and use it as a Pattern along Path: Pattern Copies= Single to make sure machine will stitch a single path.