treat the image of patterns so as to be continuous to one another in case the patterns are of an identical type 0031 fig2 shows that a pattern 60 and a pattern 61 are in a combined state in this case the stitch end point e 0 of the pattern 60 is may be indicated as the stitch start point s 1 of the pattern 61 however as shown in fig3 in case a pattern 62 is repeatedly stitched in series wherein the stitch end point e 2 is not at the end of the pattern and terminates at a stitch start point s 2 it becomes necessary to make a special treatment of pattern image more precisely as shown in fig4 in case the second pattern 63 of the same patterns is indicated in the first position at the pattern indicating device 8 it becomes necessary to indicate a portion d of the pattern 62 which overlaps the stitch start point s 3 of the pattern 63 the indication may be realized by a special treatment of pattern image as follows in fig5 when the first pattern is selected the initial data is decided from the position data of cursor so that a cursor 90 may come to an optional position in the indicating device 8 while the currently indicated data is disappeared and then the pattern image position is initialized steps s 1 s 2 s 3 subsequently the indication data for the initial pattern is read out step s 4 subsequently it is discriminated whether or not the read out indication data.