Do you know the company brand “Brother”? Yes that company that sells printers. I thought they only sell desktop (paper) printers? However, they sell printers that “print” using threads!

At the UIUC’s FabLab you can find multiple of these printers! One of these I used today!

1. The first step was to find a picture you wanted the printer to stitch. It should not have to many details. I started with a simple drawing of two hearts.
2. We loaded that picture into the program SewArt. A software that converts a jpg, png, etc. into a specific file format for the printer.
3. Basically we used the tools “Color Reduction” and “Merge Colors”. That is because we don’t wanted to stitch 250 different colors. We tried to simplify the image to use about 5 different colors.
4. Then we saved the file using “Stitch image” and Fill and Auto-sew Color.
5. The file is then loaded to the printer, which appears as disk on the computer.
6. The file will then appear on the printer’s display. And you can start sticking!