I got a question on Instagram: “Do you think Inkscape would be an option for a beginner to combine/resize/edit existing designs?” The short answer is “yes/maybe/yes,” but that “maybe” was too long for an Instagram comment so here’s a little more about it for people new to embroidery. If you already know about fill resizing, […]
A grid of same-color stitching is another way to pin down the pile of minky or terry so the decorative stitching shows clearly. It has the advantage over water-soluble stabilizer that it will also keep neighboring pile from overhanging the stitching. It’s a built-in feature of Embrilliance, but for those of us who can’t use that for financial or compatibility reasons, it can be done in Ink/Stitch too. Here’s how.
Cutting out stretchy, fuzzy minky patterns is enough of a hassle that many people turn to a Cricut Maker. We all know how that went here, though. I have a different solution, of course: using the sewing robot. This came up on Facebook so I figured I’d write it out in the blog for posterity. […]
We’re going to get a little adventurous with the effects today, using a feature that hasn’t been added to Ink/Stitch’s menus yet. First, I’m going to prepare my objects that I’ll want to fill. In this case I’m using text (not Ink/Stitch lettering, but Inkscape text) that I will convert to shapes and ungroup (Path […]
Ink/Stitch on top of Inkscape makes producing a die line for embroidery designs that don’t have them easy. Both pieces of software are free and open-source, and run on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
When you have a single-color embroidery machine, sometimes you want to sew a bunch of identical items to make the most of your thread changes. But if you just duplicate an item, sometimes your machine wants to stitch each one out in series, defeating the purpose. Pricey embroidery software like Embrilliance will group the colors […]
Or rather, without an embroidery font. You don’t need to buy a whole font if you just need initials or a name. You can just create it in Inkscape. Note: Mr. Baskerville, who taught me typesetting, is currently turning over in his grave at my use of “font” when what I really mean is “font […]
Even if you don’t use Inkscape and Ink/Stitch to make your own embroidery designs, you can use them to do things like gang existing designs while keeping thread colors together. Here’s how. First, if you haven’t installed Inkscape do that now, and then install the Ink/Stitch extension. They’re both free, and available for Windows/Linux/Mac. When […]
Aldi has $5 letter boards this week so I finally joined the trend and got one. I will not use it for every blog title, I promise. These dragons aren’t going in the Embroidery Patterns for a change. The dragon is from an Urban Threads design – I imported it into Inkscape, borrowed just the […]
As you may have guessed from my all-over-the-map projects, I have a little trouble staying on task. This is fine for hobbies (if I don’t mind having at least three storage tubs full of UFOs) but I need to be a little more efficient if I’m going to do this as a business. So I […]
