That is a way cooler craft project than anything I did as a five year old. Way to go, teacher!

I'm a little late to the party, but SophieSew is great! I downloaded it about a week ago and went through the tutorial videos, then did some of my own stuff, and apart from the frustration of a new program I'm really enjoying it. It does crash occasionally, so you need to save your work often, but it's not so annoying that I would pay hundreds of dollars for a similar program that doesn't crash as frequently. I think learning digitizing software has a steep learning curve, so don't think Embird (or any other paid program) will be any easier to learn than SophieSew.

I've just tried the sophiesew digitizing program, but I'm not able to figure out how to erase or delete a line I made on accident.  Do you know how to do that? 

This is old so the original poster might not care anymore, but for anyone else that finds this post while searching:
If you're talking about an outline, go to the nearest green square, hover over it until the [Ctrl] text pops up, right click, and select "Split outline". Do the same thing for the green square on the other side of the line you want to get rid of. Now, when you go back to object mode, you can select that unwanted segment by itself, then right click and delete it.

Wow, that is an excellent use of pattern to create those shading effects. Lovely!

Aaaaah I love that first fox! They're all too cute.

I love the final product. Not only did you use a book, but the way you cut out the image and used it looks beautiful.

All that trial and error paid off beautifully. I wish my experiments turned out half so well!

What a beautiful way to combine so many different stitches. I love the netting, too.

Amazing! I'm so privileged to already own a piece by you, but I want this one too.

I second the Ashford Traditional speculation. See this link, maybe it's the 1975 model?