16. Wildcard week¶

This week I worked on embroidering and make a panda teddy bear with the embroiderer machine.

Assignement:

   Design and produce something with a digital fabrication process 
   (incorporating computer-aided design and manufacturing) not covered 
   in another assignment, documenting the requirements that your 
   assignment meets, and including everything necessary to reproduce 
   it.

Inkstitch with Inkscape¶

For this week I worked with an opensource software, Inkscape, which have an opensource extension, Inkstitch. To do that, I first installed Inkstitch, and watched many tutorials to discover how to use it. For this week I would like to make a teddy bear panda.

After the installation of Inkstitch in the software Inkscape, I am able to see Inkstitch in the extension menu.

To test it I first drew a circle and check in params the path of the embroiderer.

Then I took my panda image, vectorize it with tracing Bitmap, params it. But here I discovered a problem, apparently the paths are crossing and can’t be embroidered.

To fix that I split the different shapes with the tool break appart.

And I made some booleans operation to have again my previous fellow in black and white but in separating each shapes.

Now I am able to do the embroidery of the panda.

To do the outline of the panda, thanks to the tutorials, I discovered that the outline has to be only a line and not a fill form. Fortunately I drew the outline of the panda during my CAD week. So I copy paste this outline in an other layer on my file, and chose the stroke style as dots to make a straight line.

And here, in params, it follow the path.

The embroidery machine¶

The device is a Brother VR machine for embroidering.

To start, I first need to set the thread in the device following the numbers on the device. The number surrounded for the circle are for the spool, the numbers without the circle are for the embroidering.

There is different kind of frame that can be put on the embroidery machine.

So I follow the path with the thread until the needle. For the needle, the machine has a tool to make more easy the threading.

Here is all the storage for all the thread.

I put the thread like this, and be careful that it is taken by the hook that go through the needle shawl, and push again the button.

Now, all the thread is set and ready to be embroidered.

For the spool, I just have to insert it into the compartment made for it, push until hear the click. I left over a little thread to be sure that it is in the embroidery.

Now that the two threads are ready, I prepared the textile for a test for embroidering. I add an iron-on paper to stiffen the fabric.

I cut it on the size of the fabric that I first cut to be able to fit on 10x10 cm frame.

Then I warmed the textile and the iron-on paper with an iron.

And press both side of the frame to keep the fabric in place for the embroidering.

I first place the udnerside of the frame.

Then the fabric.

And finally the top of the frame.

Then I fixed the frame with the textile on the device. There is some screw to adapt the differents frames.

Then I took a test shape in the library in the device.

I choose a circle.

Then there is different settings.

And now I am ready for the embroidering. I click on Verrouillage locking, and start the embroidering by pushing the red button that became green when everything is ready.

And it went pretty well.

Then I drew a small square to try the filling on my fabric. I drew it with Inkscape, save the file as .pes because it is the format for the embroidering machine. I copy it on the USB key, and I selected my file on the embroiderer.

I lock it and start the emboridering.

And it fill the shape very well. Because of the fabric we can see the meshes of the fabric but when I removed it from the embroidery frame, the result is pretty good.

Then I made a test with the fabric I will use for embroidering my panda fellow.

I stick the thermal adhesive paper to stiffen the fabric.

Then I put it on the 10x10 cm frame.

And I embroidered the square I drew previously.

Because with my fabric, when I embroidered the square, we can still a little bit the fabric inside the embroidering. That’s why I tighten the lines of embroidering in the software.

And I am happy with the result here.

On the underside of the fabric, the embroidering looks good.

Embroidering of the shape¶

Now that I understood how the machine is working, I am able to embroider my panda.

In the software Inkscape with the Inkstitch extension, I set the embroidery lines spacing at 0.2 mm. I aplly those new settings and quit params, then save my file as .pes in being careful of hidding the layer of the outline, and it is ready for the embroidering.

I rotate my shape at 90 degres to be sure it fits in the frame. I made a test in a fabric that I have of it to test the path of the embroidering if everything goes well.

And the result is very good.

Now because my final shape is made in two parts to fill it, I have to stick another piece of fabric on it, sew it with the embroiderer, and then revert it.

I will stick the two fabric together with spray glue.

I first protected the frame with paper tape.

Then spray the glue and stick the two pieces of fabric together.

To be able to revert the shape, I have to let a hole and I made and offset for the outline to be able to fill more the panda. To have an outline I selected the tool outline and did it twice to have 2 millimeters of outline.