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learnincurve
May 15, 2014

Smoosh
Correct me if I’m wrong but this isn’t “something to do with weights” is it?

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

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Lead out in cuffs
Sep 18, 2012

"That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."




learnincurve posted:

Correct me if I’m wrong but this isn’t “something to do with weights” is it?

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

It kinda looks like a weight belt, but velcro is a pretty terrible idea for weight belts.

(It's also not the greatest idea if it's BDSM equipment.)

learnincurve
May 15, 2014

Smoosh
I totally get the not doxing one’s own children thing but enquiring minds need to know.

How did the willy wonka Halloween costume go on the day?

fuzzy_logic
May 2, 2009

unfortunately hideous and irreverislbe

I grabbed two vintage (pre-WWII) sewing machines for free and had them repaired - finally started sewing with one today and realized I have no idea what half the knobs and switches do. Would people here be able to help me out if I post some pictures? The lady at the repair shop had them both running fine but the second I got them home the bottom bobbin is acting up and the machine's just eating thread like there's no tomorrow. I was able to thread them by following what she did but I'm not sure how to reload the bobbin holder or adjust tension or anything.

Lead out in cuffs
Sep 18, 2012

"That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."




fuzzy_logic posted:

I grabbed two vintage (pre-WWII) sewing machines for free and had them repaired - finally started sewing with one today and realized I have no idea what half the knobs and switches do. Would people here be able to help me out if I post some pictures? The lady at the repair shop had them both running fine but the second I got them home the bottom bobbin is acting up and the machine's just eating thread like there's no tomorrow. I was able to thread them by following what she did but I'm not sure how to reload the bobbin holder or adjust tension or anything.

Yeah post pics.

Are they Singers? Singers had some pretty standard ways of doing most things.

WrenP-Complete
Jul 27, 2012

Anne Whateley posted:

This style of shaver. If you go slowly and work on flat/taut surfaces, it's very difficult to gently caress up the piece. With the sandpaper block style, I totally ruined a pair of jeans, and a razor is too risky imo. I use my shaver for things I've knit, so my #1 goal is not loving them up.

I actually have a much smaller one for detail. While it'll be inefficient for anything as big as a blanket, it makes it much easier to focus on the spot you're working on, raise it slightly over a line of raised stitches, etc. Because it is cheap af, it occasionally pauses until you unscrew the cover and poke out the small fuzz glob, but if that's the worst it does, sign me up

Thank you!

learnincurve
May 15, 2014

Smoosh
I got a quilting book recommendation https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00N9IDK70/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o03_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This is genius, what she does is use needle punched battling cut into squares and pieces directly onto it, and assembles as blocks, that way you got the battling and top already done before the backing goes on.

I’m going to be using this method to log cabin all my scrap as I accumulate it from now on.

Rythe
Jan 21, 2011

learnincurve posted:

I totally get the not doxing one’s own children thing but enquiring minds need to know.

How did the willy wonka Halloween costume go on the day?



I can not be happier with the way it came out, my daughter's costume came out great, I was able to build my wife's easily and ran out of time and had to buy mine.

The tube idea to cover the frame was fantastic and saved a ton of time.

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.
You guys look great!!!

learnincurve
May 15, 2014

Smoosh
Fabulous! I hope you all won first prize :haw:

there wolf
Jan 11, 2015

by Fluffdaddy

learnincurve posted:

I got a quilting book recommendation https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00N9IDK70/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o03_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This is genius, what she does is use needle punched battling cut into squares and pieces directly onto it, and assembles as blocks, that way you got the battling and top already done before the backing goes on.

I’m going to be using this method to log cabin all my scrap as I accumulate it from now on.

Quilt as you go is pretty neat. The problems with it are still needing to quilt the finished top to the backing, and chunky seams where you sewed the batting squares together. I had customers that would use this method to use up batting scraps, and then do batting and backing like normal to get an extra thick quilt. A fleece backing is another good way to hide chunky seams if that looks like it'll be a problem.

BonerGhost
Mar 9, 2007

Rythe posted:



I can not be happier with the way it came out, my daughter's costume came out great, I was able to build my wife's easily and ran out of time and had to buy mine.

The tube idea to cover the frame was fantastic and saved a ton of time.

You guys are frigging adorable, you look so great.

learnincurve
May 15, 2014

Smoosh
I’m still relatively new to quilting, have just spent a lot of time on a few large and repetitive projects, and I’d never heard of needle punched battling. Fleece backing sounds like the way to go thank you, :) without it it could end up too thin in general.

there wolf
Jan 11, 2015

by Fluffdaddy

learnincurve posted:

I’m still relatively new to quilting, have just spent a lot of time on a few large and repetitive projects, and I’d never heard of needle punched battling. Fleece backing sounds like the way to go thank you, :) without it it could end up too thin in general.

Needle punched is just a fancy term for machine felting, and a lot of brands use it to make their batting. It's really common with wool and low-loft cottons.

learnincurve
May 15, 2014

Smoosh
I’ve been sewing stuff for 10 years now and I’m constantly amazed at how little I know, most feet are a mystery to me, I got put off doing shirt collars for years because of a Mcalls pattern that was marked as easy but was anything but and the list goes on.

Blog bit:
I had this teacher at school by the name of Mrs Batt “”IT’S GOT TWO Ts!” who was dreadful unless at age 12 and in your first lesson you could already thread a sewing machine she put you on some sort of twisted hate list and from that day on concentrated on people she called “natural talent”. Couldn’t be bothered to actually teach basically.
Before I dropped the class at her insistence I made an appliqué peg bag for my mother, when Bat was showing off everyone’s work to the class she ignored mine so I thought well all right then. 15 years later I saw she was still using it and it was legitimately really good (ended up lasting 20 years) and that was when I got back into sewing.

fuzzy_logic
May 2, 2009

unfortunately hideous and irreverislbe

update: I had the loving needle in backwards, I didn't even know that was a thing you could do.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004


Out here, everything hurts.




Lead out in cuffs posted:

It kinda looks like a weight belt, but velcro is a pretty terrible idea for weight belts.

(It's also not the greatest idea if it's BDSM equipment.)

Looks like a dip belt maybe. If it's for light weights, velcro might be fine.

Lead out in cuffs
Sep 18, 2012

"That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."




fuzzy_logic posted:

update: I had the loving needle in backwards, I didn't even know that was a thing you could do.

Yep, sewing machine needles are directional. Hell if I know how that actually works, but it is is a thing.

there wolf
Jan 11, 2015

by Fluffdaddy

Lead out in cuffs posted:

Yep, sewing machine needles are directional. Hell if I know how that actually works, but it is is a thing.

There's an indent on one side so the bobbin can grab the thread.

learnincurve
May 15, 2014

Smoosh
Schmetz needles do not deserve the good reviews on Amazon. Not designed for the more powerful machines at all. First you find out that the eyes are too small for the automatic threader and then they hit the foot and snap.

Zuph
Jul 24, 2003
Zupht0r 6000 Turbo Type-R
I made a backpack for shuttling books, paper, pencils, and dice to and from tabletop gaming sessions!

This is, by far, the most complicated thing I've ever put together, and it turned out stunningly great!




I also made a lil' dice bag from the leftover material.


Rotten Cookies
Nov 11, 2008

gosh! i like both the islanders and the rangers!!! :^)

I really need to know where you got that dice fabric.

Looks great!

Zuph
Jul 24, 2003
Zupht0r 6000 Turbo Type-R

Rotten Cookies posted:

I really need to know where you got that dice fabric.

Looks great!

Thanks! The Dice Fabric is from Spoonflower: https://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/7861118-dice-galore-spooky-by-pi-ratical
I had enough left over to make a few Christmas gift dice bags, too!

Sagebrush
Feb 26, 2012

Has anyone in here got experience with automatic machine embroidery?

The long and the short of it is that our university lab is working on some projects involving wearable embedded electronics, and we'd like to try embroidering control buttons and the like onto fabric with conductive thread. I'm looking around at various machines from Brother, Singer and Janome but it's been pretty :psyduck: overall. The machines themselves are surprisingly inexpensive; $500 to $1000 for a machine with a ~5x7" working area, it looks like, which ought to be fine for our purposes. However, it seems that the software situation is really terrible. We would obviously want to be able to generate our own patterns (probably from Illustrator vectors, SVG/EPS/etc), but in the home sewing world that is apparently considered an advanced niche technique, because I don't think any of the machines come with software to do it. Instead they will advertise how many fonts are built-in to do automatic lettering, or that it can do 2000 different holiday designs, or that the machine comes with a cartridge to make 150 different licensed Disney characters, or whatever. It's like some kind of clip-art print shop software from thirty years ago.

So I look around for software, and I'm just baffled. Half of the companies don't even list a price for their "digitizer" software (this is the term they use for "can make your own designs from scratch", apparently) because I guess it's like, you would only do that if you were running a business? And it's extremely difficult to figure out which of the software offerings have what features, because they take the same nickel-and-diming approach to that too and make you buy the module to use custom fonts and the module to make this kind of stitch and so on. I've got no idea why no company appears to have taken the "plug this into your macbook and embroider anything you want!" approach -- I bet that would sell extremely well to hipster knitting circles etc -- but maybe their market is entirely non-technical grandmas who just want to push the christmas tree button and don't care what it looks like exactly.

So, tl;dr: can anyone recommend a machine and software package for, say, $2000 or less that is reliable enough for academic work and which would let us make arbitrary custom stitch designs (a learning curve is fine) in a 5"x5" or larger area?

Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Dec 4, 2018

Comrade Quack
Jun 6, 2006
Witty closing remarks have been replaced by massive head trauma and general stupidity.

Sagebrush posted:

Has anyone in here got experience with automatic machine embroidery?

The long and the short of it is that our university lab is working on some projects involving wearable embedded electronics, and we'd like to try embroidering control buttons and the like onto fabric with conductive thread. I'm looking around at various machines from Brother, Singer and Janome but it's been pretty :psyduck: overall. The machines themselves are surprisingly inexpensive; $500 to $1000 for a machine with a ~5x7" working area, it looks like, which ought to be fine for our purposes. However, it seems that the software situation is really terrible. We would obviously want to be able to generate our own patterns (probably from Illustrator vectors, SVG/EPS/etc), but in the home sewing world that is apparently considered an advanced niche technique, because I don't think any of the machines come with software to do it. Instead they will advertise how many fonts are built-in to do automatic lettering, or that it can do 2000 different holiday designs, or that the machine comes with a cartridge to make 150 different licensed Disney characters, or whatever. It's like some kind of clip-art print shop software from thirty years ago.

So I look around for software, and I'm just baffled. Half of the companies don't even list a price for their "digitizer" software (this is the term they use for "can make your own designs from scratch", apparently) because I guess it's like, you would only do that if you were running a business? And it's extremely difficult to figure out which of the software offerings have what features, because they take the same nickel-and-diming approach to that too and make you buy the module to use custom fonts and the module to make this kind of stitch and so on. I've got no idea why no company appears to have taken the "plug this into your macbook and embroider anything you want!" approach -- I bet that would sell extremely well to hipster knitting circles etc -- but maybe their market is entirely non-technical grandmas who just want to push the christmas tree button and don't care what it looks like exactly.

So, tl;dr: can anyone recommend a machine and software package for, say, $2000 or less that is reliable enough for academic work and which would let us make arbitrary custom stitch designs (a learning curve is fine) in a 5"x5" or larger area?

I have an embroidery machine and I’ve managed to figure out a few things. Yes the market is very skewed towards the older generation and it’s a mess to figure out. Some of the various embroidery software makers do offer trial versions. I can dig through a Facebook group I’m in to try to dig a few suggestions out to you later tonight or tomorrow. I’ve heard the Singer machines are a finicky nightmare.

Lead out in cuffs
Sep 18, 2012

"That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."




Sagebrush posted:

Has anyone in here got experience with automatic machine embroidery?

The long and the short of it is that our university lab is working on some projects involving wearable embedded electronics, and we'd like to try embroidering control buttons and the like onto fabric with conductive thread. I'm looking around at various machines from Brother, Singer and Janome but it's been pretty :psyduck: overall. The machines themselves are surprisingly inexpensive; $500 to $1000 for a machine with a ~5x7" working area, it looks like, which ought to be fine for our purposes. However, it seems that the software situation is really terrible. We would obviously want to be able to generate our own patterns (probably from Illustrator vectors, SVG/EPS/etc), but in the home sewing world that is apparently considered an advanced niche technique, because I don't think any of the machines come with software to do it. Instead they will advertise how many fonts are built-in to do automatic lettering, or that it can do 2000 different holiday designs, or that the machine comes with a cartridge to make 150 different licensed Disney characters, or whatever. It's like some kind of clip-art print shop software from thirty years ago.

So I look around for software, and I'm just baffled. Half of the companies don't even list a price for their "digitizer" software (this is the term they use for "can make your own designs from scratch", apparently) because I guess it's like, you would only do that if you were running a business? And it's extremely difficult to figure out which of the software offerings have what features, because they take the same nickel-and-diming approach to that too and make you buy the module to use custom fonts and the module to make this kind of stitch and so on. I've got no idea why no company appears to have taken the "plug this into your macbook and embroider anything you want!" approach -- I bet that would sell extremely well to hipster knitting circles etc -- but maybe their market is entirely non-technical grandmas who just want to push the christmas tree button and don't care what it looks like exactly.

So, tl;dr: can anyone recommend a machine and software package for, say, $2000 or less that is reliable enough for academic work and which would let us make arbitrary custom stitch designs (a learning curve is fine) in a 5"x5" or larger area?

This might be worth looking into:

https://github.com/Embroidermodder/Embroidermodder

You'd probably still need the machine-specific software though. (Or someone who's cracked that / cracked the format.)

Comrade Quack
Jun 6, 2006
Witty closing remarks have been replaced by massive head trauma and general stupidity.

Lead out in cuffs posted:

This might be worth looking into:

https://github.com/Embroidermodder/Embroidermodder

You'd probably still need the machine-specific software though. (Or someone who's cracked that / cracked the format.)

I’m not a software engineer but the way I understand this is that a lot of the commercial programs will have a working file type proprietary to that program: that’s where a lot of the digitizing work happens and the settings are chosen. They then export a more limited basic file to the machines themselves. Those machine files are more per brand than per machine. The Brother machines take a .pes file and it doesn’t matter if you have the $18k top of the home line machine or their $300 model that file will work for either.

there wolf
Jan 11, 2015

by Fluffdaddy

Sagebrush posted:

I've got no idea why no company appears to have taken the "plug this into your macbook and embroider anything you want!" approach

Aside from proprietary software and compatibility issues? Because it's not really worth it below a professional level. Digitizing is a skill; you're creating a program for your embroidery machine to read. The software provides tools to facilitate that, but it can't do it for you. So for the same reason most people aren't getting a 3-d printer to make their own Warhammer figurines, most hobbyist embroiderers aren't going to go through the effort of learning how to digitize their own patterns.

If you want to make totally from scratch designs you're probably going to have to look at the industrial market, then you'll need to train someone on the software who preferably already has experience with machine embroidery. You can also just hire a digitizer to make files for you, same as you hire a graphic designer to make a logo.

You should probably talk to professional embroiderers and see what they recommend. Another idea is to go to a machine embroidery convention where you can talk directly with the brand reps and tell them what you need.

Lead out in cuffs
Sep 18, 2012

"That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."




Comrade Quack posted:

I’m not a software engineer but the way I understand this is that a lot of the commercial programs will have a working file type proprietary to that program: that’s where a lot of the digitizing work happens and the settings are chosen. They then export a more limited basic file to the machines themselves. Those machine files are more per brand than per machine. The Brother machines take a .pes file and it doesn’t matter if you have the $18k top of the home line machine or their $300 model that file will work for either.

Oh, well it seems like that tool will give you the machine specific files for a range of brands. It even has a gui to help the design.

Unfortunately it kinda looks like it's not under active development any more due to the death of the main developer, but it's worth trying out.

Worst case, just get a regular machine that does embroidery-style zigzag and just sew the patterns you need manually.

WrenP-Complete
Jul 27, 2012

Sagebrush, can you give more information about your specs and use case, please? That may help us give better recommendations.

Comrade Quack
Jun 6, 2006
Witty closing remarks have been replaced by massive head trauma and general stupidity.
Embroidery machine chat: What there wolf said about skill is accurate, but custom stuff isn't completely out of casual reach. I only have an incredibly limited knowledge of conductive thread, but working with it with an embroidery machine seems kind of complicated. You'd want to make sure someone can really understand how to use whatever software you get because I think a lot of defaults would work fine for regular thread, but would be terrible for conductive. For example by default all of my lines of running stitches are repeated 3 times on top of each other, auto digitized designs might have gaps or cross over in a way that wouldn't let conductive thread work. Some machines can also be pretty specific about the weight/thickness of the thread used. A cursory googling gave me the idea that it might be better to run the conductive thread from the bobbin rather than the top thread. The top thread goes through more tension discs so there might be fewer issues with thread weight.

I got started with embroidery for making stuffed animals as a hobby so my experience tends towards the cheap and somewhat specific. I use a program called Stitch Era Universal because when I was getting started it was free and pretty decent. It's since moved to subscription based and a website change or two and they have different tiers, I have a hard time finding it even though I know what I'm looking for. http://www.sierra-software.com/Sites/Products/SEU/StitchEraUniversal.aspx The downside is that it's Windows only, and last I checked was so Windows only that I couldn't run it in a virtual machine like VMWare, but I am running it on a Macbook via dedicated bootcamp partition. There's a demo version available that should let you check some things out, worst case the subscriptions are relatively cheap. I'm in a facebook group for other plush makers that would also be in the custom embroidery situation and I see a few other programs mentioned but I don't have experience with them: I think there are a few that use Embrilliance and Embird. Then there are some using a program called Sophie Sew because it's free, but it sounds crash prone. Hardware wise that group seems to favor the entry level Brother models the SE400 and the PE700 (I think there's new similar models that are probably just as good), people have said Singers can be a bit more finicky. You can also check in with a Sewing Machine dealer if you've got one of those, mine is more oriented to the older women hobbyist. They might be good if you want to test your thread in a machine, maybe a design you've created if you're lucky. The thing about my local dealer is that they seem to ignore the existence of those entry level Brothers and start at $1000ish machines that don't seem to have any better features that you'd use, but you'll pay more for the Disney branded designs. I started with a PE770 and I really only upgraded because I wanted the larger hoop size. Oh and fun warning about hoop sizes, Brother kinda works on an *ish scale, if you make a design thats 5x7 and try to sew it in one of their machines with a max size of 5x7 it might be too big, because really they mean close to that size - I think it might be a metric system thing.

Comrade Quack fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Dec 5, 2018

Sagebrush
Feb 26, 2012

WrenP-Complete posted:

Sagebrush, can you give more information about your specs and use case, please? That may help us give better recommendations.

Well, it's pretty much what I mentioned: sewing patches of conductive thread onto fabric to behave as electrical inputs. Imagine something like a jacket with little ipod controls embroidered on the cuff that you could tap to trigger behaviors in your phone. The electrical part of it shouldn't be an issue, as long as the thread conducts some small amount of current all the way back up the sleeve (or about that distance). We want to be able to make them arbitrary shapes (e.g. shaped like play icons or volume controls or whatever) and wrap them into the best orientations for ease of use.

learnincurve
May 15, 2014

Smoosh
Brace yourselves, it’s Pantone’s colour of the year time, this is the colour that will be in all the new fabrics in 2019...

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2018/dec/06/living-coral-pantone-colour-of-the-year-2019

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.
Picture looks like a backdrop in a cheap vintage science fiction movie.

The color...it's an "eh" for me.

learnincurve
May 15, 2014

Smoosh
I just realised where I have seen that before.




My old lady shopping trolly

there wolf
Jan 11, 2015

by Fluffdaddy
That color combo has been pretty in this year so it makes sense. I'm amused because I've been thinking of painting my dining room coral.

lowcrabdiet
Jun 28, 2004
I'm not Steve Nash.
College Slice

Sagebrush posted:

Has anyone in here got experience with automatic machine embroidery?

So, tl;dr: can anyone recommend a machine and software package for, say, $2000 or less that is reliable enough for academic work and which would let us make arbitrary custom stitch designs (a learning curve is fine) in a 5"x5" or larger area?

I think you're looking for something like Sew Art (~$70)? I use it to embroider-ize logos and names from SVGs and other image formats. I do this "for fun" for my rec sports teams.

Draw up custom names/logos in an image editor (I use Illustrator), save as TIF/JPG/SVG/BMP most major file formats, open in SewArt, make a few adjustments (they have a wizard for it), save as PES file (Brother embroidery format) on USB drive, plug in USB drive to Brother SE-600, hoop the material, and embroider.

There's probably a more professional way to do this, but for my own personal use, it's good enough.

BonerGhost
Mar 9, 2007

learnincurve posted:

I just realised where I have seen that before.




My old lady shopping trolly



It's fitting; no matter our age, we are all too old for this poo poo.

Goldaline
Dec 21, 2006

my dear
I continue to make weird underwear, it seems to be finding me a niche audience and I get more commission requests than I ever have before, wow.

Linked for just barely not quite :nsfw:

Gift Wrapped set for the Holidays
https://imgur.com/1NaXykZ
https://imgur.com/JY6mIHM

Angel Set because....I love weird angel poo poo.
https://imgur.com/ei3Q1SZ
https://imgur.com/xnx8r4n

I'm back to cosplay for the moment though, working on Chrom Fire Emblem at the moment.

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BonerGhost
Mar 9, 2007

Goldaline posted:

I continue to make weird underwear, it seems to be finding me a niche audience and I get more commission requests than I ever have before, wow.

Linked for just barely not quite :nsfw:

Gift Wrapped set for the Holidays
https://imgur.com/1NaXykZ
https://imgur.com/JY6mIHM

Angel Set because....I love weird angel poo poo.
https://imgur.com/ei3Q1SZ
https://imgur.com/xnx8r4n

I'm back to cosplay for the moment though, working on Chrom Fire Emblem at the moment.

Awesome as always. Btw, your makeup kicks rear end.

How'd you get the leggings to stay up? Is that a spandex band?

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