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.

A Geek's approach to metallic thread in eight easy stages Part 1 Thread

 

People get freaked out trying to embroider with metallic thread.  And understandably so…it shreds, it breaks, it nests more than ‘standard’ thread.  But once you get your head around some basic principle of working with the ‘metal stuff’ then you can get fantastic results with a few cautionary steps.  In this series of 8 fortnightly blog posts I’ll give you the tips I use to get great results from working with metallic thread.  Now I will talk specifically about digital embroidery but the principles are the same what ever machine you use be it a standard sewing machine doing inbuilt stitches or a long arm quilter doing free motion work.

I often think of digital embroidery and regular sewing machines like 19^th Century horses which is hilarious as I am one of the most un-equine people on the planet. Your basic sewing machines are like pit ponies; basic workhorses that can labour away on a task without much fuss or fills; a good mid-range sewing machine like the lord of the manor’s hunter; solid, reliable, good looking.  You can go up the hierarchy of machines until you reach digital embroidery machines.  I think of them like dressage horses, beautiful specialist animals that do the most amazing things that can take your breath away.  And just like with horses you need to treat in a special way; they can be particular or indeed fussy about what you put in them, refusing to perform unless they have high quality ‘feed’ and handling.  Don’t expect to drive your delicate embroidery machine the same way you can your pit pony sewing machine!

Number 1 Quality of thread

My first rule of digital embroidery is always quality needles and thread.  My first proper experience of digital embroidery back in 2007 was a painfully slow with constant shredding and breaking (every 30 seconds) and once I realized that it was to do with cheap unbranded machine needles and manky old thread that had been kicking around for years my work transformed.
For metallics I use branded thread like Madeira.  Their FS40 has been my go-to thread since the mid-1990s and I don’t think I have ever been without Gold 4 since 1986.  If you are looking for a cheaper option, I have had good results with the CR40 range; it’s got good colours in addition to the standard metal colours BUT I personally feel its thinner than the FS40 and have had issues with pattern fill blocks appearing slightly transparent.  I’ll talk through ways to solve that another time.  I use the Sulky metallics when I can get them but I burn through big reels and its often an issue of getting hold of them in quantity.  I have used other brands including some dodgy chinese brands with mixed results.

I’ll also talk about alternative metallic threads like lurexes and hologram sliver threads in episode 8 of this series

Think about how old your thread is?  Thread will deteriorate with age and if its left in sunlight.  It becomes brittle and frankly only good for embellishing machines! I have had branded thread snap all the time when it has been left on a window sill.  If your embroidery is shredding and snapping ask yourself is the thread a problem?  Can you run through your design with a standard rayon on a similar fabric no problem? Does the thread snap more easily if you pull it between your fingers.  These might indicate that you have a problem with your thread.
For a while I took a hard line that I wouldn’t use anything with an unfamiliar brand that I had bought on a market stall. That unfair on market stall holders but as a rule I would always say proceed with caution; only buy small quantities until you have tested the quality.  In fact I have had some good results with cheap metallics if I was careful with some of my other stages in stitch out.  Also be aware that you might not be able to get EXACTLY the right colour again if you run out on a project halfway through. 
If you are new to digital embroidery invest in some good quality threads.  You don’t want to be frustrated by thread that will easily shred and snap.

The Covid Quilts: Part 2

We all know that the last 6 months have been tough.  I am married to a front line NHS worker so we had been following the growth of this illness for some time.  It was clear that things were going to be bad from mid February.  I had read stories of what was happening in the hospitals of Northern Italy and could see it was only a matter of time before it was over here.  Nicky was battling with getting decent PPE and the right to wear it on wards with coughing patients still waiting for a diagnosis taking days to come through.

I was still teaching at Hereford College of Arts.  The last day before lockdown, as I walked to the station I overheard two students behind me talking; they talked about how they wouldn’t mind getting ‘IT’ because they could do with ‘a bit of a skive’.  I was so angry I couldn’t turn to look at them.  They were young and naïve but I thought of the older people in their lives and how they might be affected by the illness.

Nicky led from the front and was one of the first of her team to dress up like an astronaut and go onto ITU. She works in cardiology and Covid does horrible things to your heart; echocardiograms were in high demand.  The first time she went up there she said it was like a war zone; she was clearly shaken; she stopped talking about what was going on during the 12 hour shifts day and night.

I was at home feeling fairly helpless.  I am zooming away to my students from Hereford trying to keep them positive and working, but in comparison to what Nicky was doing it felt very small. 

I am a quilter; that’s what I do.  So I decided to quilt and this piece is the result.

I started with a simple ‘Stay Safe’ and then another for my sister, but I knew that I wanted to make a bigger more considered piece.

It says what I wanted to say to those two young people.

 

 

Hand-Made Embroidered Electromyography

Some of you will know that I have had a long standing relationship with CoRE, Centre for Robotics Research at Kings College London.  Last year I was involved in an EPSRC GCRF project to investigate the potential of hand sewn e-textile muscle sensors as a reusable and lower cost alternative to mass produced sensors.

I am very pleased to announce that thanks to Samuel Pitou and Matthew Howard’s hard work, a paper on this project has just been published in the MDPI Journal Sensors.  You can read about it here https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/12/3347

I ran a series of workshops with the women’s group Shelanu in Birmingham and at the Science Gallery in London to help  test this hypothesis.  Participants were asked to sew and test a given number of sensors and these were then laboratory tested later.

So this is the technical jargon bit…..When you move a muscle in your body electrical impulses, electromyopthy, can be measured on the surface of the skin (sEMG).  This research project was to compare the results for hand embroidered sEMGs alongside machine stitched and mass produced single use stick on sensors.  The rationale was that because they are on a fabric substrate there is potential for laundering and therefore re-use which may be a cheaper and more sustainable.   Because a hand sewn sensor does not need expensive equipment and relies on straight forward sewing techniques there is also the potential for them to be made by Community Interest Companies (CIC) within the populations of the low income countries where they might be used.

Want to know what the point is?  This short film shows embroidered sEMGs picking up electrical impulses on the skin to drive a robotic limb

The Covid Quilts: Part 1

The first half of the year has been an unusual one for us all.   When lockdown finally happened I had already witnessed my partner, Nicky,  trying to plan for the oncoming storm for at least 4 weeks; I had read the stories of the overwhelmed hospitals in Northern Italy; my brother was locked down in Southern Spain; it was clear it was going to be bad.

 

Many of you will know that Nicky works in Cardiology and specifically Echocardiology (ultrasounds of the heart).  The procedure is a 40 minute, intimate scan that is on a par to cuddling the patient.  In the run up to lockdown she told tales of scanning coughing patients dressed only in a plastic apron and gloves because although they were symptomatic they were undiagnosed because the test results were taking 6 days to come back; at that point the hospital would not let staff wear masks unless there was a confirmed diagnosis.  The guidelines on PPE kept changing and it was a constant battle for her and her team.  She was fitted for the special masks that were for use on the Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU) and began to talk about 12 hour shifts working around the clock.  The hospital was adding extra beds to ITU and converting operating theatres to additional ITU wards; work started on the Nightingale Hospital at the NEC.  I know it was tough on her kitting up (they call it donning and doffing) and going onto the wards dressed in the full gear; she stopped talking about what she saw.

And what was I doing?  I was working from home (and then furloughed) for the sewing machine distributors of Pfaff and Husqvarna Viking that I provide technical support for.  My three days a week at Hereford College of Art went onto zoom tutorials and seminars trying to reassure students that it was all going to be okay.  Whilst this was really important, it was not the life and death experience that Nicky was going through. 

It was scary.  I felt impotent.

I am a quilter; so I made a quilt

I found myself chanting the message ‘Stay Safe’ whenever she or I went out.  On the back of the earlier Recovery Quilts it seemed a logical step to make a Covid Quilt saying that.  I wanted to sew something that was as positive and joyous as possible and hang it in as public a place.

The first quilt was made very quickly and I taped it into the front window so people walking past could see it.  Technically its unfinished as its still a quilt top only.  I will admit that it was actually sellotaped in place.  The second, more considered version is quilted and hangs in my sister’s front window on the busy street in Hove she lives on.  Annoyingly her quilt is much better than mine.