InkStitch - hotfix

Draft

Objectives

• Create patterns for hotfix

• Quality: draft

• Difficulty: avanced

Principles of hotfix

Hotfix or (hotfix stones) are decorations like rhinestones, rhinestuds, nailheads, etc. that can be glued on textiles or other materials by heating them. This article will explain how to create designsd with rhinestones, i.e. flatback hotfix stones, using InkScape and optionally Ink/Stitch

Rhinstones come in different sizes. The most popular are 4mm (16ss), 3mm (10ss) and 7mm (34ss). Working with SS16 allows for fairly good filled lettering or other details and manipulating these is not too much of a pain. Working with small SS10 stones is a real pain ! SS20 (4.6 to 4.8mm depending on the make) or bigger are easy to use.

There are three methods to design with rhinestones

• Glue stones individually with a hotfix applicator, i.e. some kind of soldering iron with and end that fits on top of a rhinestone (cheap)
• Cut out the template with a laser cutter or a cutting plotter. Glue a sheet of something (e.g. thick paper) underneath. Then fill the template with rhinestones by pouring a pile on the template and then using a brush. You the can either transfer the stones to a textile using a transfer sheet or just leave them in the template. Thickness of template should be 0.5mm for smaller stones, but it can be higher for larger stones (e.g. SS16 and SS24). Then use a heat press, e.g. 30 seconds for 160 - 200 degrees to glue.
• Buy a stone setting machine that can place and glue hotstones (expensive)

See the Hotfix stone for details.

Creating cutout patterns

Cutout patterns define where the laser or vinylcutter will create holes for the rhinestones.

Fill manually a polygon with circles

• Draw a circle, e.g. 4mm. Make sure to get the size right, because later scaling with precision will be more difficult.
• Copy/paste the circle and place the circles manually with polygones
• A quick method is to use the tiling method below, create a copy, select a subset, move in place, and delete the ones that do not fit into the polygon

Alternatively, use one of the methods below or combine

Using fill patterns

• Draw a circle, e.g. 4mm. Make sure to get the size right, because later scaling with precision will be more difficult.
• Create a fill pattern from this circle
  • Object -> Pattern -> Objects to pattern
  • Objet -> Motif -> Objets en motif (fr.)
  • The result will show as fill pattern in the fill panel
• Fill a polygon with the pattern
  • Object -> Fill and Stroke ... -> Fill ; Select the pattern l icon
  • (fr) Objet -> Fond et Contour ... -> Fond (fr.) ; Sélectionnez l'icone "motif"
• In the Fill and Stroke panel adjust the distances, e.g. 20% = 0.8mm in our case.

That type of pattern can be cut with a machine that accepts bitmap input. For a typical laser cutter, the file must be exported as high resolution PNG image, then vectorized with center lines.

Using tiles

• Create a circle
• Create a large tile of these circles
  • Edit -> Clone -> Create a tile of clones ?
  • (fr) Edition -> Cloner -> Créer un pavage de clones
  • You can change translations
• Combine all the clones (CTRL-K)
• Add a polygon (contour only), below in the stack, make a copy (to use as outline in embroidery)
• Path -> Difference
• Path -> Separate ? (CTRL-SHIF-K)
• Remove objects that you do no want. Copy/Paste and/or move circles.