Stitch Era - adjusting stitch sections

Introduction

Stitch Era by default creates certain kinds of fill patterns that you my want to change, unless you convert each vector manually to a stitch pattern. Let's examine two situations:

• Some zig-zag stitches are too long
• Some areas shouldn't be filled since they are too big

Converting zig-zag areas to fills

The following example shows are rather large Mediawiki logo. Both the "M" and the "W" had to long stitches, i.e. would produce a somewhat fragile design.

By selecting the area (either by clicking on the area) or by selecting it in the object manager (sometimes this is the only way to get the right section) you then can click on the Area Fill pull down menu (underneath the kind of pattern you use) and change it as shown in the following screen captures.

Changing area fill of the "W" letter. "M" already converted

Changing area fills

Reducing fill density

For larger areas, we suggest to reduce fill density. By default, Stitch Era uses about 5 lines/mm which is a dense setting. 3 lines/mm may not be as pretty since there will be some holes, but it will produce a more weareable design. You also could try 4 lines/mm first.

In addition:

• density also should be adjusted to thread thickness. By default, we are using Rayon 40, a medium standard weight.
• density has a different effect on different stitch patterns.

The following picture shows a design that uses 5 lines/mm to the left. In addition the tips of the sun flower petals are stitched double. The design to the right uses mostly 3 lines/mm, except for sun flower zig zag that uses 4.

Mediawiki logos with different density settings (Angles distorted by webcam)

In order to change density in selected areas, it is best to use the Object manager (to the right) as the following picture shows:

Changing area properties with the object inspector

Finally, if you print something on top of another area, make sure to remove the underlay. I don't see any reason to have one.

Using programmable stitches and radial fills

After printing a larger design you may find that despite using underlay, there is pull effect. Or you may not like the heavyness of a larger design. There are several options for dealing with this:

• Skip some parts (just delete the areas or pathes) ... may produces interesting effects on some designs. Note that you also may have unintentionally several layers of stitches on top of each other. Your machine will make noise and the thread may break if that happens. In that case, you certainly should remove areas or better redesign at the vector drawing level for example.
• Change the fill pattern to programmable stiches or radial fills that have big holes. We will look at this situation.
• In addition or alternatively you could change the density, e.g. use only 3 lines/mm instead of 5 (see just above)

Below is a picture of a digitized design that probably would be difficult to print since it's fairly large.

Girl on Boat

By removing both areas and by changing most remaining areas into radial fills, we sort of get an interesting result that (almost) can be printed on a T-shirt without underlay.

Girl on Boat

Below is the result, it was stitched without underlay, just paying attention to proper hooping.

Girl on Boat