Testing Sewing Machine Embroidery Patterns
Leah RybakDescription
Old T-shirts make a great piece of fabric for testing out your sewing machine stitches. In this video, Leah Rybak demonstrates a quick and easy trick for testing a sewing machine embroidery pattern before you start your next project.
A great thing to do when you're needing fabric for test stitch outs is to buy cheap T-shirts on sale at your local thrift store or at the local store that you have. I bought these shirts for a dollar, which was great. Fabric can get kind of expensive, so it's always nice to save a little money here and there. And that way, you're not ruining a nice piece of fabric with your test stich out, as well. Basically, what I did is I took my T-shirt here. Going to unfold it. And I cut out part of the fabric. You can see those exemplified right above here. And I used for test stitch outs. Basically, test stitch out can be testing the embroidery, testing how your machine's working, the thread colors with your fabric, anything like that. And it's great to do just in case there's any glitches in your machine, your bobbin's not threaded correctly, any problems at all. As you can see, there's this little, little problem in the M on these initials here, and that's a great reason to test stitch. You just want to make sure that everything that your machine's working great and that the design looks the best way and is positioned in the way you would want it to. You can also use this for appliques or embroidery designs. And you can do something pretty on the T-shirt fabric and use it again later, adding it to another project or something like that. Basically, using T-shirts from the thrift store or cheap ones on sale is a great way to test stitch out your projects.
What do you do to correct a less than good stitch out design? ( example- as she showed in her video). or an error?
Why wouldn't I try my test on a small piece of the same fabric I will use for the final product? Seems like that would tell me more than using some other fabric.
The idea is good if you are going to embroider on T-shirts. I usually make sure I get just a little more of the material I am going to use - or a fat quarter of the same material. If it stitches out clean, I have a sample I can show others if they ask ,"do you do embroidery?" I do have a question tho. Why should I have to purchase a membership to watch an entire "Free" video to the end? That defeats the idea of a "free video"
She should have shown the difference stabilizers make for the fabric(t-shirts this time) and often that makes the pattern acceptable...or not!
I agree with Leah as to using t-shirt or inexpensive material to practice. I would rather thrift it to practice. The t-shirt idea will give me ( my being some what of a rookie at this) a more stable material tom practice with until I become more proficient with other materials. My being a metal worker by trade would rather practice with aluminum rather with gold. My pockets are not that deep. I comment to this not to be argumentative but to bring a good point to her tutorial. Leah's tutorial was spot on. Thank You for the in sight.
Totally agree with Rosemary. It does no good to test on t-shirt fabric unless you are planning to use it. National Sewing Circle is irresponsible to allow bad advice on "free" videos. Many people don't read comments and will try a bad method and get poor results on their projects. Designs are digitized for specific fabrics. Example: never use a design with a heavy fill on a t-shirt fabric, only an open airy design
Why would you test an embroidery design on a knit fabric unless you were going to embroider on a knit fabric of the same thickness, fibre content etc, this is a complete waste of time and thread. This is the third video I have watched of questionable quality, glad I have not paid the full price for premium membership!