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 heating rod
• 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. 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 machine that can place hotstones

See the Hotfix stone for details.

Creating patterns in InkScape

• 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
  • 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.