Objective
This week is wildcard week, meaning we had the option to choose from a range of options. I’ve always had a heavy interest in fashion and have even done some editorial writing on the subject, so embroidery was immediately my choice for the week.
Beyond learning the basics of how to embroider, I also wanted to challenge myself by embroidering something large: both on a large canvas and a large design.
Instruction
Char gave us a great rundown of how to use the Brother SE 1900. I was a little surprised that we were using a commercial embroidery machine, but was astounded to here about the different ways that personnel in the media lab have contributed to software that works with it.
It seems like everyone has a different preferred way to handle their digital embroidery file. Char recommended starting with InkScape and the InkStitch extension, as it’s the most intuitive for users (this is what I ended up using). She also showed us some other techniques through Processing 4 and PE Embroider. With these, you can use lines of code to automatically process images for embroidery and convert them into a file type that the machine will recognize.
We tried using PE Embroider to see if we could make Van Gough’s Starry Night into a suitable design. In the end it mostly worked, but also showed how important defined lines and shapes are.
Other elements of our instruction were how to secure hoops to your canvas, how to thread the machine, and how to start an embroidery job.
Planning
To make something “big,” I found an old jacket that I hadnt worn in a while and decided to embroider the back. I then started looking for some “simpler” designs with limited colors and readily defined shapes. I settled on the following skeleton with coffee:
After a little testing, I realized that I needed to invert the image for InkStitch to poperly regonize what parts of the design were to be embroidered.
After that, I tested out a few different fill stitch patterns in InkScape:
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Auto Fill
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Contour Fill
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Guided Fill
While it was cool to see the different effects, I did some reading that said that changing away from auto fill can cause some issues unless you’re very knowledgeable at troubleshooting. So I stuck with auto.
Testing
To make sure my file would work correctly, I did a quick test-embroider on a tote.
The process was incredibly simple; no errors to report!
Just needed to cut some jump stitches!
Final Embroider
While I wanted to go big, I realized that I would be limited by the size of the hoops. My original design was roughly a square, but larger hoops were more of a rectangle. To take advantage of this, I switched to a more vertical design. Since I said I wanted to make cat stuff and really haven’t, a cat was the natural choice!
I set it up similarly to the skeleton, but opted for a 45 degree angle for the fill stitches. It just seemed right given the angle of the design.
Hooping the jacket was a little more difficult, largely just because of the scale and the desire to center the design. Because the hoops was bigger, it was harder to keep tension in the material. It took me roughly a half hour to get the hoop on nicely.
Initially, the embroidery started fine. The bobin thread ran out during the first third-or-so of the design, so I needed to replace that. When restarting, things looked smooth…until there was a soft grinding-type sound. It didn’t seem to stop the job, but after a while it was clear the machine was not actually making new stitches.
It turned out that while I replaced the bobin thread correctly, the bobin thread I chose was a bit too thick. The result was that the bobin thread got tangled and seized up, and no bobin thread was coming out.
To fix this, we (Graham helped out a LOT here) rethread the bobin thread, tested that it worked, and then used the interface on the Brother to back up to where it roughly messed up. You could adjust by 100 stitches at a time, so it took a lot of clicking!
Back on track:
Immediately after finishing:
And after cutting the jump stitches:
