WEEK 15

Wildcard Week




Assignment:



Software(s):



Skill(s):




From the beginning of Fab Academy, I have been anticipating Wildcard week. I saw Wildcard week as my opportunity to explore embroidery and sewing. I never done either and my final project revolves around cutting and sewing my own garment. Assignment: Get familiar with the embroidery and sewing process

Assignment: Get Familiar with the embroidery and sewing process

DESIGN

As I mentioned above my goal this week was to get a better understanding of the embroidery and sewing process. To do this I thought it would be a great Idea to create a simple design and embroider it on a t-shirt. To create the design I used Adobe Illustrator. Creating the design was pretty straight forward. Once Illustrator was open I use the text function to write “keep in touch” and “uki+u”. After I quickly found a picture of a butterfly online, copied, and pasted the picture into Illustrator. With the picture, I then used the image trace function on the butterfly to convert the picture to vectors that I can adjust. I then exported the design as a PNG file and was ready to move to the next step.



SET UP

With the design completely, my next step was setting up the equipment for the embroidery. The first thing I did was convert the design into the right format form embroidery. In the lab we have two embroidery machines, Brother SE1800 and the PFAFF Creative 3.0. This week I was using the Brother SE1800. To convert my design to the right format is used Brother’s PE-Design software that comes with the machine. Using the wizard tool I imported my file and selected the “Auto Punch” option. There were a few prompt and settings windows that followed after selecting Auto Punch. After importing the file, I then was able to further edit design details like, stich pattern, stich heaviness, stich direction, and thread color. Once the file prep is done the last step in this part is to export the file onto a usb for later use.



Next step in the set up process is preparing your garment for embroidery. For this my garment choice was a t-shirt. This part of the set up took a few trial and errors. The idea behind preparing your garment is to stabilize the fabric to prevent wrinkles and other problems. The steps I took were:

  1. Grab your fabric and cut an additional piece of stabilizer or interface to place underneath your garment
  2. Place stabilizer underneath garment and load both into the hoop of your choice. I used the default hoop that came with the Brother SE1800
  3. Place the top half the hoop top of the fabric. Once the top half is in place try to remove any wrinkles and creased within the hoop by stretching and increasing the tensions of the fabric. (Tip: Try to make sure your fabric and stabilizer are the same tightness. Helps with the final product.)


  4. When all creased and wrinkles are gone and fabric tensions feels good. Tighten the bottom of the hoop
  5. Load your fabric into the machine and you are ready to go




EMBROIDERY

The final set-up steps were loading the thread into the machine. With the Brother SE1800 you have to load two separate locations of thread into the machine. The first location is the top thread. Each embroidery machine has its own loading process for the top thread. The purpose of the process is to create the necessary tension on the top thread for optimal sewing or embroidery. The second location is the bottom thread, which is pretty straight forward compared to the top thread.



With everything loaded, I was ready to start the embroidery. I plugged in the usb I loaded my design on earlier and clicked start. It was that simple.



I am happy with this what I was able to accomplish this week. I was able to get a real understanding of how to work the embroidery and sewing machine. This knowledge will certainly help me during my final project.



FILES:
Embroidery Design (Illustrator File)
Embroidery Design (PNG)