US Patent 7503271 Sewing machine control device and multi-needle sewing machine

A sewing machine control device includes a control unit for controlling the execution of a sewing operation based on sewing data including at least needle drop point data and thread color data of a sewing thread by selectively using a plurality of sewing needles respectively set with different color thread; a sewing needle-thread color storage medium storing sewing needle-thread color mapping data specifying the relation between sewing needles and thread color of thread respectively set thereto; a similarity evaluation unit for evaluating the similarity between the thread color specified by the thread color data and the thread color set to each sewing needle based on the thread color data and the sewing needle-thread color mapping data; and a sewing needle selection unit for selecting the sewing needle used for sewing in accordance with the sewing data based on evaluation result rendered by the similarity evaluation unit.