PEC File: Brother Embroidery Format Explained

PEC embroidery file format

A PEC file is Brother's machine-level embroidery format. Every PES file contains a PEC block, and a .pec file is that block on its own: the stitches, a colour number for each thread from Brother's fixed 64-colour palette and small preview icons for the machine's screen. Most Brother and Baby Lock owners never need a separate PEC file, but some machines and set-ups ask for one.

Updated October 3, 2026

At a glance

Made for

Brother and Baby Lock machines; read as a separate file by some models, such as the Baby Lock Radiance

Relation to PES

Every PES file contains a PEC block; a .pec file is that block on its own

Thread colours

A number from Brother's fixed 64-colour palette for each colour block

Previews

48 × 38 pixel monochrome icons: one for the design, one per colour

Missing compared with PES

Design details and the full thread table with names

On Embroidly

In every download, colours mapped to the nearest Brother palette thread

What a PEC file stores

PEC is lean. A stand-alone file begins with the signature #PEC0001, a short label of up to eight characters and the list of colour numbers, followed by the stitch data and a graphics section. The stitches use short and long moves, with flags for jumps and trims, so a PEC can describe the same design as a PES down to every needle drop.

The graphics section holds monochrome icons of 48 × 38 pixels: one for the whole design and one for each colour block. Those icons are what a Brother machine shows when you browse a USB stick, which is why PES files, with their PEC block inside, show a picture on Brother screens while a DST shows only its name on older models.

What PEC lacks compared with PES is the design layer on top: no design name for software, no hoop layout and no thread table with exact colours and names.

PEC colours: Brother's palette

Every colour in a PEC file is a number that points to a thread in Brother's fixed palette of 64 entries, the first of which is Prussian Blue. A design digitized with other shades gets the nearest palette colour when it is saved as PEC. That is why a design can look slightly different in PEC than in a PES opened with software that reads the thread table, although the stitches are identical.

Which machines read PEC

Brother and Baby Lock machines read the PEC part of every PES file. As a separate file, PEC is listed for some models, for example the Baby Lock Radiance, and multi-format machines such as bernette's b70 DECO and b79 read it too. Commercial software such as Hatch reads and writes PEC as a "Deco, Brother, Babylock production file". If your machine reads PES, use PES.

How to open and convert a PEC file

The free embroidery file viewer opens PEC files and shows the palette colours, the real size and the stitch count. The embroidery file converter turns a PEC into PES, DST, JEF, EXP, VP3, XXX or U01 with the same stitches; converting to PES gives you a file every Brother and Baby Lock machine reads, with the colours mapped into its thread table.

PEC files from Embroidly

Every library design includes a PEC file in each of its three sizes for the machines and transfer tools that ask for one, with each thread mapped to its nearest Brother palette colour. The PES file in the same download contains the same PEC block plus the full thread table, and our PES format page explains how the two fit together.