Seamlyne Designs

We do love lilacs, but Instagram makes you have a picture. I have a poll for you. This is a personal preference. Thank you!

Heya, friends...Bill here. Been spending the majority of my computer time digitizing a new design. Maybe you saw the teaser? I don't use digitizing software, I do it by hand using Inkscape extension in Inkscape.

The biggest challenge is minimizing jump stitches - the stitches you get when the machine has to jump from area to area. Our machine will trim the thread after every individual object, but trimming adds time and an opportunity for the thread to break.

Anyhow, the trick is to create your own "travel" stitches: just a line of running stitch between the end point of one area and the start point the next, in the knowledge that another area is going to cover that up. Sometimes the lines get really convoluted, like the travel stitches from pink to pink in the rose.

Doesn't always work. You can't always predict the start and end points, so you run a travel stitch that works with the simulation the actual render starts somewhere else. The only way to know is to run a preview (below), which, on this design, takes about fifteen minutes a pop.

Jump stitches, as you may have gleaned by now, are a pain in the ass.

Here you go, folks! The teaser for Wm's next embroidery project and planned online store piece