15. Wildcard Week!¶

Individual Assignment:

Design and produce something with a digital process not covered in another assignment, documenting the requirements that your assignment meets, and including everything necessary to reproduce it. Possibilities include but are not limited to wildcard week examples.

Download Design Files¶

Click here to download my design files folder

Individual Work¶

I started by watching these videos on How to embroider using the Brother SE600 and How to wind a bobbin on the Brother SE600.

I was a bit confused by why I needed both a bobbin and a roll of thread to embroider, so I looked it up and found this helpful definition of a bobbin:

Bobbin: “provides the bottom thread, the underside of the stitches a sewing machine forms“

SewArt¶

I then looked at my Fab mates Angelina Yang’s and Collin Kanofsky’s documentation to see how they made their SewArt designs.

I then downloaded the below image of a dog head from this site:

Then I removed the background in remove.bg and downloaded the new image.

Next I downloaded SewArt from this link.

According to S & S Computing, SewArt is “digitizing software for converting raster image files (.jpg/.png/.tif/.bmp) and vector images (.svg, .emf, *.wmf) into embroidery file formats. Image processing tools and a step-by-step wizard are provided to render images that are suitable for yielding high-quality embroidery stitch-outs.”

I needed to use SewArt to make an image into an embroidery file.

Once in the application, went to file>open and selected my image. The software looks as shown below once opened:

Definitions¶

They’re many buttons in the toolbar that are very helpful but need some explaining to understand how to use them. Below I have them labeled and defined:

New Workspace: start a new workspace (shortcut: Ctrl+N)
Open: open an existing document (shortcut: Ctrl+O)
Save: save the active document (shortcut: Ctrl+S)
Save As: save the active document with a new name
Cut: cut the selection and put it on the clipboard (shortcut: Shift+Delete)
Copy: copy the selection and put it on the clipboard (shortcut: Ctrl+C)
Paste: insert clipboard contents (Ctrl+V)
Undo: undo the last action (Alt+Backspace)
Rotate: rotate image
Reflect: reflect image
Resize image: resize image
Crop: crop (select a portion) of the image
Posterize: posterize image; allows you to go into posterize mode where you can smooth and blend color regions (cartonize) and reduce image color content (posterize). You can adjust the despeckle level (a greater despeckle level means a smoother image with less isolated points (speckles)) and you can adjust the feature blending level to adjust the amount of detail in the image. Furthermore, with a higher posterization level, fewer colors will be in the image, sharpening the gradient between different color regions.
Image Wizard: open image processing wizard
Color Reduction: reduce number of colors in image
Merge colors: merge colors in image
Brush: blend (smooth) colors
Pencil: pencil fill tool
Fill region: fill a region with selected color
Eraser: erase parts of image
Shapes: create shapes and add to the image
Convert to Redwork: convert image to redwork
Stitch image: convert image to stitches. To convert an image to stitches, you can either 1) click the “Auto-sew Image” button to convert the entire image to stitches or 2) left click on an image color to fill just that region with the selected stitch type. You must then click the “Save” button to write the stitches to an embroidery file (.pes).
About: display program information, version number and copyright
Help: display help for clicked on buttons, menus and windows (shortcut: Shift+F1)

Posterization Mode¶

For my image, I clicked the “Posterize” button and went with a despeckle level of 100%, feature blending of 100%, and a posterization level of 80%.

Below I compare how the image looks at 0% and 100% with the different sliders in posterization mode (because my design only features two colors, the difference was very small, however, posterizing helped to blend colors such as dark greys and navy blues that, in the image pixels, are in the black outline of the dog head, allowing them to merge with the rest of the black stitches):

Posterization 0%:

Posterization 100%:

Despeckle level 0%:

Despeckle level 100%:

Feature blending 0%:

Feature blending 100%:

Color Reduction¶

For color reduction, I left the image as is because it already only had two colors

Resize¶

I resized my design to be 76.2 mm x 76 mm so that it would better fit on the hoop.

Stitches¶

I then clicked the sewing-machine-looking icon (the “stitch image” button). I chose to auto-sew the image and set the white of the image as a transparent color (not to be stitched).

Saving it¶

I then clicked the “Save” button to save the stitches to an embroidery file in a .pes format. I then clicked the “Save As” button and was given the option to save the design in a .tif format. I wanted to have both formats that way I could upload the .pes file to the embroidery machine and reference the .tif file which had my design later on.

After saving it, this pop-up will appear, confirming your file save format:

Brother SE600¶

The embroidery machine I used was the Brother SE600. The two videos I mentioned earlier, How to embroider using the Brother SE600 and How to wind a bobbin on the Brother SE600 I followed for much of the embroidery process.

Bobbin¶

First, I wound the bobbin. I placed an empty spool on the metal post shown below.

I then put a spool of thread on the post.

I then took the thread, pushed it under the clip shown at step 1, went around and under the ledge shown in step 2, and then went around the outer clip and then back and around the circle shown in step 3.

I then took it and looped it around the empty spool and cut the excess thread off on the tab below the spool as shown in step 4

I then set the speed to the first (and slowest) setting on the slider and clicked the upwards arrow button to start winding the bobbin.

I clicked the upwards arrow again to stop winding the bobbin, removed it from the post, and cut the thread connecting it to the bigger spool of thread.

Threading the Machine¶

To thread the machine, I primarily followed the directions printed on the Brother SE600. I believe this to be the best way to thread the machine but I will try to explain it in words/with pictures as well.

I took the spool of thread and took the thread through the loop at step one as I did for the bobbin. Next, I went under the ledge shown in step 2.

The next parts differ from the bobbin process. I took the thread and went down the gap as shown in step three. I then went down below the end of the sewing machine and looped it back up the machine.

I then took the thread back to the top of the crevice and looped it around a hook as shown in step 4.

I then pulled it back down and pushed it into the loop at step 6.

I then slid it through the indentation on the way to the circular thing at step 7.

Step 8 on the machine is just cutting the thread. I did not need to do this as my string was already rather short but you can choose to if you’d like. Then I pulled the lever down as shown in step 9.

A little loop then formed next to the needle which I took tweezers and pulled the loop so that the thread fully came through the hole of the needle. The machine was then threaded!

Furthermore, I set the dile on the machine to 4

File Setup¶

I took a USB stick and uploaded my .pes file into it. I then stuck the USB stick into the embroidery machine and turned the machine on. The screen looked as follows when I turned the machine on:

I then clicked the bottom right button to open the USB designs.

From there, I clicked my design (the dog face) and clicked the “Select” button.

I then clicked the “Embrodier” button and had the following details come up:

Hoop¶

I took the hoop:

I then put two sheets of breakaway paper on it, lining it up with the handle

I then put and lined the hoop top up with the bottom

I then pushed the top piece down into the bottom and tightened the side screw on the hoop

To insert the hoop into the embroidery machine, I carefully slide it under the needle and lined it up with the slots on the machine.

I then clicked it into place

embroidery-ing¶

I put the foot down on the machine and clicked the green arrow button to start embroidery-ing

Once it was done it looked like this:

I then pulled the foot back up, cut the thread connecting the design to the machine, and it was done!

Hand vs Machine embroidery¶

I read this article while looking into the differences between hand and machine embroidery.

Material

Machine embroidery cannot use as fine or delicate of threads as can be used with hand-stitched embroidery.

“The fragility of silk threads makes it challenging for machines to handle during the embroidery process. … Machine embroidery typically uses artificial fibers or robust artificial silk threads which are much more durable than natural silk threads.”

Thread Size

Machine embroidery uses threads of uniform size. Comparatively, hand-stitched embroidery work often uses threads of different thicknesses to add texture and/or smoothen and create more realistic appearances.

Stitches

The human nature of hand-made embroidery makes it so that every piece is unique. Machine embroidery, however, creates a uniform stitch, resulting in a regular pattern.

Color

Oftentimes, hand embroidery can be more vibrant in its color than machine embroidery.

Texture

If you take the time to look closely at hand embroidery and machine embroidery’s textures, you will notice that hand embroidery has a neater, smoother appearance while machine embroidery can look rougher in texture.

Reflection¶

This week was very fun! It was nice to try and explore something new all on my own. I learned a lot about the embroidery process and gained a new respect for the sewing and embroidery arts!

References¶

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew2djWkraME

https://fabacademy.org/2024/labs/charlotte/students/collin-kanofsky/Week%2015/

https://fabacademy.org/2024/labs/charlotte/students/angelina-yang/assignments/week16/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SxOW5eC-g8&t=321s

https://fabacademy.org/2019/labs/charlotte/students/katie-chai/assignments/week18/#sew-art

Last update: September 6, 2024