Tag: embroidery machine

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Learn Turtlestitch with our friends CESI

A screenshot of a turtlestitch program for generating a Sierpinski triangle with the generated output

Our friends at CESI will be hosting a Turtlestitch workshop on Saturday 21st of November from 2pm to 5pm. Turtlestitch is a way to code up embroidery patterns using code blocks. It’s often used as a teaching tool for coding, but also a fun way to generate embroidery patterns.

Whether you’re new to coding or new to embroidery, there’ll be plenty to learn. This workshop is aimed at adults interested in embroidery or teaching coding. It will be led by Mags Amond with support from John Hegarty and Helen O’Kelly. You’ll find out about the history of Turtlestitch, learn how to create embroidery designs, and stitch them out on our industrial machine and some of the smaller domestic machines that will be brought on the day.

Mags and John in their Turtlestitch embroidered apron and labcoat.
A postcard embroidered with repeating diamonds. In the corner is the turtlestitch website and logo.
An embroidered postcard from Turtlestitch on a fridge.

The workshop will cost €10 and includes materials. Tickets can be bought with this link..

https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/learn-turtlestitch-with-cesi-at-tog-tickets-2003335570620?aff=oddtdtcreator

A triskelion embroidred in variegated thread

We’ll be holding our usual open social from 7pm, so stick around if you like homemade pizza from homemade pizza ovens and talking to nerds.

If you don’t know CESI, they’re a group of educators with an interest using information technology in education.

The CESI owl, as an embroidered badge
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New toy! An industrial embroidery machine!

A tog member stands in front of the embroidery machine, showing off a piece of embroidery in a hoop

If you’ve been in the space recently, you might have see our newest toy tool, a 12 colour, industrial, embroidery machine! Many of our members are very excited about it, so we started showing members how to use it and will be opening it up to a wider audience in the coming weeks with workshops on how to design for embroidery machines.

The machine is a secondhand ZSK Sprint 5, made in Germany in 2012. It’s passed through a few hands before coming to us, but it’s in great condition, and we’re going to get many years of use out of it yet! It’s able to embroider areas up to 30 by 30 cm and can automatically change colours and cut the threads. We also have a cap attachment for it, but let’s start with flatter surfaces first.

A grey hoop with grey fabric mounted in it. the numbers 1 to 12 are stitched out in different colours. Apart from 8 which appears to be mangled.

As it’s a 90 kg beast, one of our members built a table to handle the weight. We’ve put the machine in the small room with the laser cutter as it’s quite noisy, but it tends to move a lot, so we couldn’t put it upstairs by the 3D printers or they’d be very sad.

A metal legged table with a box top made from OSB and a nice bit of ply

Of course, as a hackerspace, we’re not out buying the manufacturer’s closed software but we are delighted to be able to use a variety of open source software with it. The machine takes .dst files, which are an industry standard supported by many open source tools. The main workhorse software is Inkscape with the plugin Ink/Stitch. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it’s extremely flexible. There’s also the option to use PEmbroider with Processing, and we can’t forget TurtleStitch for those interested in machine embroidery as an educational tool as well as for art. Expect some design workshops to pop up over the coming months!

If you simply want to gaze at its majesty, drop in on any of our open evenings. On craft night, you’re most likely to find the machine embroidery nerds, so pack a craft project and stick around after getting to know our newest toy and its biggest fans.

An early test embroider. The white fabric is still mounted in the hoop. It has a black duck with the text tog.ie in green. Below that is testing testing one two