A Geek's approach to metallic thread in eight easy stages. Part 2: Needles

Sewing machine needles aren’t really very exciting things to look at.  At a show like Festival of Quilts the customers aren’t 10 deep to buy needles.  Needles are usually sold in little packets which on first sight can all look the same. However they are the first thing that I look at when trouble shooting a problem with stitch out.  My best top tip in problem solving is to change the needle for a new one.  Hang on to the old one and if that isn’t the problem then you can always swap it back. Some say you should change your needle every time you start a new project. Schmetz recommend you change your needle every 8 hours.  Now you might think ‘Well they would say that, wouldn’t they’ but I have found that as soon as I start to have frequent thread breakage I will change the needle and frequently that will solve the issue.
I will not use a needle unless it’s a Schmetz or an Inspira one; I am sure there are other good brands, its just I know these needles work for me.  I know how to get them; I think they are well priced; they get me good results.

So lets talk a bit about the engineering and whats going on with a sewing machine needle.  A sewing machine needle has a shank (the bit that goes into the needle holder on the machine) and blade that ends in the point where the eye is.  The blade has a long grove that allows the thread to reach the eye and a scarf (flat bit)  at the back to help it pass through. Whilst the shank is standard, the blade, tip and eye are all variable.  Choosing the ‘right’ needle is like Goldilocks….you want it to make a hole that allows the thread to pass through but small enough that the hole is visible.  I personally try and go with and a solid heavy weight needle of about 14/90 although I’ve been using 12/80s lately.

But in my humble opinion it’s the eye of the needle that is key to working with metallic….so unsurprisingly I use a metallic needle.  The eye is much longer than the eye in standard needle and therefore the thread is not put under the same pressures.  I find this longer eye reduces shredding and breakages with any kind of delicate or fussy thread and I use them as standard now in my embroidery machines no matter what thread I am using.  The only time I dont anymore is if I need a jersey or a ballpoint needle because of the fabric I am working on.  I don’t find that they break more (although I have heard that they can be a little less robust than say a denim or topstitch needle).

And of course I have a pile of used, slightly dull metallic needles that aren’t blunt so I then wear them out on my conventional machine doing day to day sewing; think of it like the dressage horse handing its old competition saddle down to the Lord of the manor's horse.

Recovery Quilts: The path back

Recovery Quilt 3 : Out of the dirt, 2019, approx 180x120cms

I’ve been on a bumpy road lately.  Challenging things have happened to me and those around me.

It left me in a dark place.  

Whilst I have been working, it’s been on project work.  I hadn’t done a piece of personal studio work for about two and a half years.  In the past my studio practice has always been the safety valve; a way to vent the pressure.  But this time I couldn’t work; I was blank; I was empty; I lost my way.

As part of the journey, back I decided to make a quilt; a comforter.  It was the action of making that was to be the important bit.  It was a private thing.  There was no ‘story’ to tell. I wasn’t thinking of you, the audience, just myself as a maker.  Think of it as a displacement activity.  The main criterion was it was to be joyous.  When faced with a design choice I had to choose the more joyful option; to go for a trumpet blare of colour rather than the sludgy monochrome I have been submerged in.

And I wanted it to be technically slick.  Contained, flat with very accurate stitchery.  Some might say it’s out of character.

But at the same time, I don’t want these ‘Recovery Quilts’ to be bland ‘fridge magnet’ quilts with insipid inspirational quotes.  The words are very personal to me.  The texts have been chanted in my head the whole time; my mantras for getting through.

The piece above is Recovery Quilt 3 : Out of the dirt.  It has been shortlisted for the Vlieseline Fine Art Textiles Award, one of the most prestigious textile competitions in Europe.  It will be on show at Festival of Quilts NEC Birmingham 1-4^th August.  I can't explain how great that has made me feel.  

Recovery Quilt 3: Out of the dirt.  detail of digital embroidery and applique.

Young ProspectUS

I worked on a lovely project organized by Somerset Art Works at Taunton Deane Pupil Referral Unit last week.  These are pupils who are not in main stream education for a variety of reasons. The plan was to give a basic introduction to sewing machines and how their in-built stitches can be used to build up decorative surfaces. 

The emphasis of the workshop was how simple stitch techniques could be used to build up more complex surfaces that could then be turned, if the student wanted it, into a finished product.  After a safe practice demonstration students started using the machines.  The lovely guys at Pfaff had lent me a couple of machines and I bought mine as well and we worked all of the machines hard.  The plan was for students to just stay with me for a half day but one student really got into it and stayed all day making an embroidered purse and then a bespoke make up bag.  This was seen as a great success as she often struggles to stay in school for a long period.

I also bought with me a micro tag gun was not really used as much as I expected.  It’s a very quick way to apply sequins and whilst there was much discussion about then they weren’t really used on the final pieces.  They were however used to make felt ‘camouflage’ fabric with a student with an interest in the military.  This was then further embellished with camouflage sequins that I had bought some time ago but had never found the right project to use them on….until last week!

A big thanks to the teams at SAW, Taunton Deane and VSM UK ltd for their help in making this happen

This is the project blog.  https://youngprospectus.wordpress.com/

It works!

Well after a lot of sampling and a lot of help from the team at the Centre for Robotics Research at KCL we have embroidered speakers that are triggered when the quilt is touched.  A very big thanks must go to Brendan Michael for all his fantastic help on this.

There is still a lot of behind the scenes stuff to sort but in the meantime you might like to see this film of one of the test samples working.

Just so you know whats going on, I deliberately made the connections long (the circuit is about 2.5m in total) to test off the resistance of the thread.  The spiral and part of the wiggly line has been digitally embroidered on my lovely Pfaff Sensation.  The rest is couched by hand.  At the beginning of the film you will see me trigger the sound file to play by touching a wire to a trigger point on a Lilypad.  The camera then shows the length of the circuit before zooming in on the speaker and showing the back with a powerful magnet.  The sound file is cutey Diogo Mello and his Dad singing as I have yet to get the boys sound file sorted.

The thread has been kindly supplied by UK based Benton and Johnson and I will tell you about that amazing company in a future blog.  In the film it’s their silver super twist.  There are a couple of adaptations that I make to both the thread and my machine to be able to embroider with it but I am afraid that at the moment that’s all top secret!

This is their website  https://www.thetoyeshop.com/benton-johnson.html

This project is made possible with the support of The Cultural Institute at King’s College London, premiering as part of Utopia 2016.

Embroidered Speakers Part 1

We have begun developing the embroidered speakers for the Paths to Utopia project.  I am working with Dr Matthew Howard from the Centre for Robotics Research, KCL and one of his students Bowen Han.  The samples in the picture are a variety of stitched wires and conductive threads.   Unusually for me these first samples were all free motion embroidered by hand with a mixture of couching and cabling.  The first test was to see if we could get signal to go through the circuits and we managed it on all the samples.  Of course some samples were better than others but we could get an audible but quiet ‘buzz’.  That was because we weren’t amplifying the signal but we will look to try and do that later in the process.

The next stage was to actually digitally embroider the speakers for two reasons.  We can accurately measure the length of the thread so we can then accurately work out the electronics and secondly because they do look lovely when they are done that was.

This project is made possible with the support of The Cultural Institute at King’s College London, premiering as part of Utopia 2016. 

Festival of Quilts 2015

I am very, very excited to have a piece shortlisted for the Fine Art Quilt Masters prize at Festival of Quilts this year.  The prize is one of the biggest competitions in the quilt world in Europe.

I can’t show you the piece as that would invalidate my entry but it is from the ‘Error bred in the bone’ project up at BARC, University of Bradford.  It’s based on an x-ray of a skull from a medieval cemetery attached to a leper’s hospital in Chichester, and the archaeological dig plans of the site.

The image above is also from the ‘Error bred in the bone’ project and is a detail of an archive x-ray from a leper’s hospital in Addis Ababa from the 1980s.  This piece is in the Quilt Art 30^th anniversary exhibition ‘Small Talk’ which is in the gallery section of the Festival of Quilts.  This show of smaller pieces is the companion show to Dialogues which will open at the Quilt Museum in York in September.  You can buy the accompanying catalogue here. http://www.quiltart.eu/quiltartpublicat.html

AND finally I will also be on the Festival panel discussion ‘How does a quilt become a piece of fine art?’ along with Sue Prichard, Keeper of Textiles at the V&A, Dr Sue Marks, Helen Parrott, and my dear Danish friend Charlotte Yde on Friday 7th August, 12.15pm - 1.00pm.  A big subject for a 45 minute discussion!  You can find out more and book tickets here.
http://www.thefestivalofquilts.co.uk/Content/Panel-Discussions/8_42/

So it will be a very busy Festival of Quilts for me.  If you don’t see me on the Fine Art Quilt Masters gallery, or the Quilt Art Small Talk exhibition, or the panel discussion then you’ll find me on the Pfaff stand driving the long arm Powerquilter.  Please come along and say hello!