Digital Embroidery Magic

I have been really excited to play with digital embroidery! Watching the machine stitch a design is mesmerizing! I was curious to see if this technique could be done on a knitted fabric. 

To begin learning the process of doing this, I used the blocky chart pattern of my small collaged eight-point star. It was an easier design to translate into the software program, similar to Adobe Illustrator, to create an embroidery design file. In the software you can choose from so many different stitch patterns! 

Since I'm still learning and this is very much an experiment stitching onto knits, I used swatches to test the embroidery. These are swatches that I machine knit using punchcard or electronic machine with Designaknit8. As the swatches are some what small, They were placed in a hoop with a layer of tear-away stabilizer underneath to keep the fabric taught and stable.

I had the machine stitch with metallic threads, gold and silver, which add a nice bit of sheen. I like how the embroidery layered over a fair isle knit pattern adds another level of texture and pattern. It certainly exceeded my expectations! I was surprised how well it worked (you just have to set the speed of the stitching to a slow speed!) as it did not make the fabric too rigid and it didn't pucker! Looking forward to doing a bit more playing!