Creating embroidery designs is possible from both vector and bitmap sources. This is usually done from vector sources, but it's also possible from raster sources.
You will need to look for an embroidery program with digitizing function, i.e. a function that allows users to make embroidery designs (like .pec files for Brother machines) from raster sources (.bmp, .jpg, png. etc.). A lot of specialized embroidery design software actually offer this function and should thus be capable of bmp to pec conversion.