Down at the media lab last Tuesday night CeCe, our fearless leader was working on some embroidery at a fancy machine that we have and then you can use too if you come in Tuesdays from 2 to 11. As some of us were sewing newbies we were surprised to discover that most embroidery enthusiasts have to fork out $100 month for software subscriptions to “digitize” embroidery patterns into sewing embroidery machines.
There are not really that many affordable options, although there seems to be many open-source solutions with limited capabilities. That being said, there isn’t a version of Blender for hardcore embroidery hackers.
This is definitely an area we want to investigate! Hackersphere, do you have any good recommendations for open-source embroidery software? We’ll return in another blog post. If we get enough nerds on this, we can make it happen!
Update: Inkstitch!
From our members Muirén Ní Sídach: wait, there IS cool open-source software!
Muirén Ní Sídach:
Ink/Stitch An open-source machine embroidery design platform based on Inkscape. https://inkstitch.org
How to Digitize an Appliqué Design Using Ink/Stitch Julia Griffey https://youtu.be/e3bS9F40G0c?si=uOXWGtZ3K2IVidQj
There are dozens of videos dating back over 12 years of people hacking old analog sewing machines by adding different kinds of home-brewed digital automation hardware and software. It’s definitely on my bucket list of DIY projects and that of other people on the official Arduino forum (blog posts).
Arduino CNC Embroidery Machine
“Hello everyone, this is an Arduino UNO based setup, very cheap, I used an old brother embroidery machine, took out all the electronics and other assemblies and kept the basic mechanical setup needed for a stitch, for hoop and 2D stepper motor bed I found an old accessory at a scrap shop, then combined the two and added some electronics with the Arduino and bring old junk to life, I’ll cover more details in another video, if any one is interested in code, mention in comments.“