HUS embroidery file format

What a HUS file stores

HUS is unusual among embroidery formats because its stitch data is compressed. The open-source pyembroidery library, which reverse-engineered the format, reads three separately packed streams: one with the commands (stitch, jump, colour change), one with the sideways moves and one with the vertical moves. Compression keeps the files small, and it is also why writing HUS is hard: the packing has to be reproduced exactly.

Colours are just as compact. Instead of a colour value, each colour block points to an entry in Husqvarna's own palette of 29 thread colours, starting with Black, Blue, Green and Red. A design converted to HUS is therefore limited to those shades, and a HUS converted to another format brings those palette colours along.

Which machines read HUS

The format was made for older Husqvarna Viking machines, and the current multi-format flagships still read it: the DESIGNER EPIC 3 and TOPAZ 65 list HUS among their 15 formats. bernette's b70 DECO and b79 read it too. Machines that load VP3 only, such as the DESIGNER JADE 35, can't open a HUS file at all.

Free tools read HUS but can't write it

Here the free and the paid worlds part ways. pyembroidery, and with it Ink/Stitch and most free converters, opens HUS files but can't save them. Commercial programs such as Hatch read and write HUS. Our own converter and viewer are built on pyembroidery: they open your HUS files, show them and convert them, but they don't produce HUS.

That is less of a problem than it sounds, because every current Husqvarna Viking machine reads VP3.

How to open and convert a HUS file

The free embroidery file viewer opens HUS files and shows the size, stitch count and palette colours. The embroidery file converter turns a HUS into VP3 for current Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff machines, or into PES, JEF, EXP, DST, XXX, U01 or PEC for other brands. The stitches carry over unchanged; the Husqvarna palette numbers become colour values or the target brand's nearest palette colours.

If your collection also contains VIP files, those need a different route: free tools can't read VIP.

HUS and Embroidly

Our library doesn't ship HUS files. Every design comes as VP3, which every current Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff machine reads, together with PES, JEF, EXP, DST, XXX, U01 and PEC. If you sew on an older machine that reads HUS but not VP3, tell us: it helps us decide whether HUS downloads are worth adding.