Machine embroiery is a term that can be used to describe two different actions. The first is using a sewing machine to "manually" create (either freehand or with built-in stitches) a design on a piece of fabric or other similar item. The second is to use a specially designed embroidery or sewing-embroidery machine to automatically create a design from a pre-made pattern that is input into the machine. Most embroidery machines used by professionals and hobbyists today are driven by computers that read digitized embroidery files created by special software.