5 ms·

Ink/stitch: an Inkscape extension for machine embroidery design

155 points by buovjaga 9y ago

rambojazz 9y ago
Does this tool work with some embroidery machine? In other words, can we think of "shareable" designs that people can exchange and embroider their own clothes from a local machine, only by using Inkscape?
- buovjaga 9y ago
  Lex got this machine as a gift and it sparked the project: http://www.brother-usa.com/homesewing/modeldetail.aspx?ProductID=SE400 http://www.brother-usa.com/homesewing/modeldetail.aspx?Produ...
- MBCook 9y ago
  It seems it uses Embroidermodder under the hood. That supports 45 different formats, which are listen on the Wikipedia page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embroidermodder#Embroidermodder_2_Features https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embroidermodder#Embroidermod...
  - yourapostasy 9y ago
    lexelby addresses the question, "why not just use Embroidermodder?": "In theory, this project was going to be exactly what I wanted. In practice, it never got funded on Kickstarter and it’s largely incomplete." lexelby also describes what exactly was used from the Embroidermodder2 project: "...it contains a really awesome core library that knows pretty much every machine embroidery format and how to convert between them. I use it to convert the CSV files that ink/stitch outputs into the PES files..." This is tangentially interesting for me, because in one of my pursuits, I want to fabricate a little over a hundred, uniquely-worded "Remove Before Flight"-style-streamers [1], and would continue to create them at a constant, reduced frequency after the initial run. The custom embroidery industry doesn't seem to cater to that kind of use case; all the vendors I visited online want multiple orders per design, and have high setup costs per design. That made it expensive enough that it is worth it to me to purchase an entry-level embroidery machine like the Brother SE400 and have at it myself with the built-in fonts. But ink/stitch seems ideal if I ever extend my use case (which is just crank out some sans serif text with blaze orange orange thread onto some thick black fabric) in the future to include some simple graphics. Learning to re-hoop (since most of my streamers will be a foot or longer) seems tricky, though. [1] http://www.aircraftspruce.com/pages/ps/coversaircraft_remove/nelsonproducts2.php http://www.aircraftspruce.com/pages/ps/coversaircraft_remove...
MBCook 9y ago
Fantastic. There aren’t many programs, they tend to be Windows only, and they’re VERY expensive. I remember Linus writing a blog post about this exact problem. Seems it was in 2010. http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/01/embroidery-gaah.html?m=1 http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/01/embroidery-gaah....
- reacweb 9y ago
  Linus's software is installed on all the computers of my house so that preview of .pes files works everywhere. It is not as pretty as commercial software's preview. Does someone have an improved fork ? How commercial software achieve to give volume feeling to their embroidery previews ?
vages 9y ago
Page rendering peculiarity in IOS Firefox: The content shrinks about 5% whenever my finger touches the screen.
- MBCook 9y ago
  I found that really odd and distracting too. (Safari on iOS, so same rendering engine)
  - 0xabe 9y ago
    I came to read the comments because I was sure the page rendering on iOS would be just as big a topic as the topic itself. If not bigger.
dh-g 9y ago
Is there a embroidery equivalent to 3d printings https://www.thingiverse.com/ https://www.thingiverse.com/ ?
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  Etsy has a large market of embroidery patterns. That's often the first place I search when looking for something. Also, a subtle quibble, but embroidery is the original 3D printing. Should just call the newer stuff plastic embroidery. ;)
throwaway2016a 9y ago
This is awesome. I wrote come basic view / transform embroider software back in the 90s but nowhere near this. Mostly just used to flip designs upside down and stuff like that. I remember the commercial software my employer was using was something like $5k per computer per year.
V2hLe0ThslzRaV2 9y ago
Anyone know if this the best "consumer-level" machine for this sort of stuff? https://www.amazon.com/Brother-SE400-Combination-Computerized-Sewing/dp/B003AVMZA4 https://www.amazon.com/Brother-SE400-Combination-Computerize... If so, what would be the next likely step up?
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  The SE400 isn't bad but the hoop size is a bit limiting. Beware that Brother intentionally slows down its cheaper machines but they are still quite usable. They also intentionally limit the clearance under the arm of their cheaper machines which can be frustrating with conventional sewing. I would recommend picking up an "obsolete" home embroidery machine. Models that were top of the line 10+ years ago can be had for a steal and most have seen little use. That will require sacrificing USB connectivity but you can get a more capable machine in the end.
- schacon 9y ago
  I have actually done a number of sweatshirts for my family and friends with this and it's a pretty great machine. If you've never done embroidery and want to start with a cheap and capable machine, I can vouch for this one. It's also a pretty solid sewing machine that I use a lot for fixing my kid's clothes or working on Halloween costumes, etc. I've been personally using the SewArt software (paid $75) with Wine emulator on my Mac and it miraculously works. I'm looking forward to trying out this Inkscape extension, the SewArt stuff is hilariously bad while simultaneously being one of the most expensive software licenses on my computer. Fun fact, this machine has 476KB (kilobytes!!) of memory to hold these designs, which is smaller than I thought possible for consumer hardware in this day. How do you outfit a machine with a USB connector and then put 400k of memory on it? Also fun, your PES file sizes can't be more than around 40k.
UncleEntity 9y ago
Finally...someone took the time to do something I'm much too lazy to do myself. Mom's all into embroidery and I want the GD dancing bears on the back of one of my hats but all the free software kind of sucks/is abandoned. I do have some ideas for a fill algorithm based on origami complex fold rule thingies that I think would be interesting, especially the curved folding algorithm[0]. I also think the 6(?) folding rules would be a good start for laying down the fill paths following the outline of complex shapes. Perhaps someday I'll explore this, depends on how bad I want the dancing bears I suppose... [0]http://graphics.stanford.edu/~niloy/research/folding/folding_sig_08.html http://graphics.stanford.edu/~niloy/research/folding/folding...
ZeroGravitas 9y ago
Some photos of real life output of this process would be a good addition to the page. I'm kind of vaguely intrigued by the whole idea, but unlikely to run out and buy a machine. Some photos that show what's possible could tip me over the edge. The manufacturer has some photos on their site where you can buy e.g. Toy Story patterns, but a) they're not created via this software, b) they don't actually show you them on a backpack or whatever in real life, just the design.
- nickthegreek 9y ago
  found some photos: https://github.com/lexelby/inkstitch/tree/master/images/patches https://github.com/lexelby/inkstitch/tree/master/images/patc...
unhammer 9y ago
related: http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/embroidery-design-on-linux-now-possible-with-thred http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/embroidery-design-o...
- buovjaga 9y ago
  The code was uploaded to GitHub later: https://github.com/thinkuped/thred https://github.com/thinkuped/thred

155 points by buovjaga 9y ago

Does this tool work with some embroidery machine? In other words, can we think of "shareable" designs that people can exchange and embroider their own clothes from a local machine, only by using Inkscape?

buovjaga 9y ago
Lex got this machine as a gift and it sparked the project: http://www.brother-usa.com/homesewing/modeldetail.aspx?ProductID=SE400 http://www.brother-usa.com/homesewing/modeldetail.aspx?Produ...
MBCook 9y ago
It seems it uses Embroidermodder under the hood. That supports 45 different formats, which are listen on the Wikipedia page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embroidermodder#Embroidermodder_2_Features https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embroidermodder#Embroidermod...
- yourapostasy 9y ago
  lexelby addresses the question, "why not just use Embroidermodder?": "In theory, this project was going to be exactly what I wanted. In practice, it never got funded on Kickstarter and it’s largely incomplete." lexelby also describes what exactly was used from the Embroidermodder2 project: "...it contains a really awesome core library that knows pretty much every machine embroidery format and how to convert between them. I use it to convert the CSV files that ink/stitch outputs into the PES files..." This is tangentially interesting for me, because in one of my pursuits, I want to fabricate a little over a hundred, uniquely-worded "Remove Before Flight"-style-streamers [1], and would continue to create them at a constant, reduced frequency after the initial run. The custom embroidery industry doesn't seem to cater to that kind of use case; all the vendors I visited online want multiple orders per design, and have high setup costs per design. That made it expensive enough that it is worth it to me to purchase an entry-level embroidery machine like the Brother SE400 and have at it myself with the built-in fonts. But ink/stitch seems ideal if I ever extend my use case (which is just crank out some sans serif text with blaze orange orange thread onto some thick black fabric) in the future to include some simple graphics. Learning to re-hoop (since most of my streamers will be a foot or longer) seems tricky, though. [1] http://www.aircraftspruce.com/pages/ps/coversaircraft_remove/nelsonproducts2.php http://www.aircraftspruce.com/pages/ps/coversaircraft_remove...

MBCook 9y ago

Fantastic. There aren’t many programs, they tend to be Windows only, and they’re VERY expensive. I remember Linus writing a blog post about this exact problem. Seems it was in 2010. http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/01/embroidery-gaah.html?m=1 http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/01/embroidery-gaah....

reacweb 9y ago
Linus's software is installed on all the computers of my house so that preview of .pes files works everywhere. It is not as pretty as commercial software's preview. Does someone have an improved fork ? How commercial software achieve to give volume feeling to their embroidery previews ?

vages 9y ago

Page rendering peculiarity in IOS Firefox: The content shrinks about 5% whenever my finger touches the screen.

MBCook 9y ago
I found that really odd and distracting too. (Safari on iOS, so same rendering engine)
- 0xabe 9y ago
  I came to read the comments because I was sure the page rendering on iOS would be just as big a topic as the topic itself. If not bigger.

dh-g 9y ago

Is there a embroidery equivalent to 3d printings https://www.thingiverse.com/ https://www.thingiverse.com/ ?

WorldMaker 9y ago
Etsy has a large market of embroidery patterns. That's often the first place I search when looking for something. Also, a subtle quibble, but embroidery is the original 3D printing. Should just call the newer stuff plastic embroidery. ;)

throwaway2016a 9y ago

This is awesome. I wrote come basic view / transform embroider software back in the 90s but nowhere near this. Mostly just used to flip designs upside down and stuff like that. I remember the commercial software my employer was using was something like $5k per computer per year.

V2hLe0ThslzRaV2 9y ago

Anyone know if this the best "consumer-level" machine for this sort of stuff? https://www.amazon.com/Brother-SE400-Combination-Computerized-Sewing/dp/B003AVMZA4 https://www.amazon.com/Brother-SE400-Combination-Computerize... If so, what would be the next likely step up?

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
The SE400 isn't bad but the hoop size is a bit limiting. Beware that Brother intentionally slows down its cheaper machines but they are still quite usable. They also intentionally limit the clearance under the arm of their cheaper machines which can be frustrating with conventional sewing. I would recommend picking up an "obsolete" home embroidery machine. Models that were top of the line 10+ years ago can be had for a steal and most have seen little use. That will require sacrificing USB connectivity but you can get a more capable machine in the end.
schacon 9y ago
I have actually done a number of sweatshirts for my family and friends with this and it's a pretty great machine. If you've never done embroidery and want to start with a cheap and capable machine, I can vouch for this one. It's also a pretty solid sewing machine that I use a lot for fixing my kid's clothes or working on Halloween costumes, etc. I've been personally using the SewArt software (paid $75) with Wine emulator on my Mac and it miraculously works. I'm looking forward to trying out this Inkscape extension, the SewArt stuff is hilariously bad while simultaneously being one of the most expensive software licenses on my computer. Fun fact, this machine has 476KB (kilobytes!!) of memory to hold these designs, which is smaller than I thought possible for consumer hardware in this day. How do you outfit a machine with a USB connector and then put 400k of memory on it? Also fun, your PES file sizes can't be more than around 40k.

UncleEntity 9y ago

Finally...someone took the time to do something I'm much too lazy to do myself. Mom's all into embroidery and I want the GD dancing bears on the back of one of my hats but all the free software kind of sucks/is abandoned. I do have some ideas for a fill algorithm based on origami complex fold rule thingies that I think would be interesting, especially the curved folding algorithm[0]. I also think the 6(?) folding rules would be a good start for laying down the fill paths following the outline of complex shapes. Perhaps someday I'll explore this, depends on how bad I want the dancing bears I suppose... [0]http://graphics.stanford.edu/~niloy/research/folding/folding_sig_08.html http://graphics.stanford.edu/~niloy/research/folding/folding...

ZeroGravitas 9y ago

Some photos of real life output of this process would be a good addition to the page. I'm kind of vaguely intrigued by the whole idea, but unlikely to run out and buy a machine. Some photos that show what's possible could tip me over the edge. The manufacturer has some photos on their site where you can buy e.g. Toy Story patterns, but a) they're not created via this software, b) they don't actually show you them on a backpack or whatever in real life, just the design.

nickthegreek 9y ago
found some photos: https://github.com/lexelby/inkstitch/tree/master/images/patches https://github.com/lexelby/inkstitch/tree/master/images/patc...

unhammer 9y ago

related: http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/embroidery-design-on-linux-now-possible-with-thred http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/embroidery-design-o...

buovjaga 9y ago
The code was uploaded to GitHub later: https://github.com/thinkuped/thred https://github.com/thinkuped/thred