Fab Lab Report

I visited Fab Lab in New Islington Saturday morning. They have an open session Friday and Saturday, meaning you can go use their equipment for free. The three I was most interested in was the digital embroidery machine, the vinyl cutter and the laser cutter. The laser cutter has a long waiting list and needs to be booked prior to the session. The vinyl cutter and digital embroidery machine didn't have any bookings for the day so I tried out the digital embroidery machine as I was new to this equipment.

Prior to the session I had rung Fab Lab to ask which format to bring my work in, they said PDF was fine and would be compatible but when I actually got to Fab Lab I was told that the

machine isn't compatible to a PDF and needs to be in a .sew format, this meant a complicated and frustrating process of:

> Opening my work in Inkscape, saving as a .svg

> Opening that file in gimp2 and saving as a .bmp manually

> Import the .bmp with easyport

By this point the design I'd originally drawn in illustrator and saved as a PDF was heavily pixelated, but I was told because the software was old that was the best they could do.

Easyport was the software I used to fill my work with colour, the digital embroidery machine

then recognises the colour and asks you to change thread accordingly.

After I had selected the colour it had to be saved as a .sew to be then opened in Pulse

Ambassador to be saved in the format .jef

It took 4 hours in total, because when it was pixelated I had to fill in some of the lines I'd previously drawn in illustrator because they were missing.

Here is the process from my time on the digital embroidery machine.

I originally started on this one, unaware I had put a background on the design and I had chosen green, so aware the green would dominate the design, I stopped the machine and changed the thread to white. I later decided it I was going to go with my original idea of not having a background so I stopped the machine and started again on a new piece and removed the white background from the design on screen.

This was the outcome. I've noted that because the shapes of the design are small they are unrecognisable as diamonds in this piece. I think for design purpose the machine works best with stronger, bolder shapes.

This is the outcome after I cut away the joining stitches. It definitely doesn't have the professional finish I expected it to have. I think this was due to it starting off as an incompatible file and it having to be saved so many times, especially as a .bmp, as it isn't a very good format to be saved as in the first place. The next time I use this machine though I will have a clearer insight to achieve a more professional finish with the design and that would be to save it as an .svg in illustrator after putting the illustration together, this would then cut out the large amount of saving the design went through which caused pixilation and further problems.

I'm glad I visited Fab Lab and tried my sample on fabric as it still gives me an indication of how the sample would of felt if apply on a tshirt. I think because of the density of the design, it would of made the tshirt feel quite stiff when worn so I wouldn't of used it as a final design for that reason, but I have tested it and received a sample out of it as well as gaining knowledge on how to use the digital embroidery machine.