Creating Good Cuts from Image Files

 

Those Noisy Image Files

In our eagerness to complete a project, we often rush through the creation of the objects involved and then wonder why our Silhouette Cameo 4 sounds so LOUD when cutting objects created from imported images, but very quiet when running professionally developed files. In the image above, the design on the left runs relatively smoothly, quickly and quietly. The design on the right runs slowly and the machine makes a chittering racket while it's cutting. 

Let's work with a typical image file and see how to correct it.

Import the Image File

In Silhouette Studio, start a new project. In the Main Menu, select File > Merge...

This will open a dialog box where you can browse your machine to locate an image to cut. In this example, I chose a PNG file and then zoomed in on it so I could see its details better.

This is a very simple image and should cut perfectly, right? 

In theory, it should, but look carefully at the borders between the yellow and the blue - they're jagged and the blue and yellow mix together along the edges that are not perfectly vertical or horizontal. This image may look nice when used on a web page, but it can cause trouble when cutting unless some editing is performed first. Let's see how to fix it up.

Trace the Image to Convert to a Cut File

 First, we have to change it from an image to something that the Cameo will cut. Click on the "Trace" icon to open the Trace Panel. 

Click on "Select Trace Area" and draw a box around the image.

Adjust the settings as desired. In this case, I simply went will the default select of "Solid Fill", and clicked "Trace". 

If the default settings don't trace the image well enough, try adjusting some of the settings in the trace dialog. The yellow shows what will become cut areas. 

After the image has been traced, select it and move it off the mat or delete it if you won't need it for reference.

Observe the red lines. The lines look like they're scribbled and aren't perfectly straight, even though they should be straight. If this is cut now, the machine would chitter and skree like crazy and the look of the final project may be less than ideal.

Check Edit Points

Click on Edit Points, then select the traced image.

 

The square outline looks fine, but it isn't needed for this project - it was merely the outer border of the imported image. The rest of the image has too many edit points. 

To begin cleaning up the image, the outline square needs to be removed. Click on one of the points on the outline square and hit the delete key. Hit the delete key several more times to remove all 8 points that make up the square. This leaves the main part of the image, which is what we want to use for our project. 

Offset FTW

It is possible yet tedious to remove the extra points by deleting them all. The challenge is that they are not connected in a straight line and you can't select a bunch at once to remove them in groups. 

The easiest method for cleaning out surplus edit points I found was to use Offset.  The Offset feature will duplicate the original shape a little bit larger than the original but with clean lines.

Open the Offset Panel by clicking on the Offset icon in the right-side button ribbon.

Select the image, click on Internal Offset. Adjust the Distance to a relatively small value. I chose 0.015. Click "Apply".

It won't look all that different, but if you click on the selected image and move it to the side, you will see a second copy with lines that look a lot cleaner and thinner than the original. 

Select both images (hit Ctrl + A to select all items on screen). Click on Edit points and compare the results: 

The one on the right is the original version, and the one on the left was created from the offset. Because there are fewer points on each of the lines, the new version will cut much more quietly than the original. The final result will also have smoother edges and look more professional. 

I added some lettering and a horizontal weeding line at the bottom to smoothly separate the design from the extra vinyl. 

I clicked "Send" and watched it cut. 

It ran great on this lovely HTV. I weeded it part way before I caught my error:

Do you see what's wrong? This is HTV - Heat Transfer Vinyl. The carrier sheet is on the side that becomes the outside once the HTV is ironed to the material. You can't use transfer tape to pull it off the carrier then iron it to your shirt because the part of the Vinyl that bonds with the shirt is facing up right now. 

This is how it needs to be placed to iron it onto the mouse pad. 

That is definitely not going to work. The only bright side is that I was able to adhere it to a scrap of fabric to prove that I was not going to melt the main material I planned to apply it to. 

The instructions for the HTV says that it has to be heated to 300 F for 20 Seconds. Will it melt? Glad I have a test scrap and a bad cut for testing!

Well, it looks like the scrap survived unscathed. I still used a piece of teflon between the material and the heat press just in case the material melted. I didn't want to have to clean my heat press if I could help it.

Success! 

Now on to the real version...

Select the whole design, then in the main menu, select Object > Mirror > Flip Horizontally. 

Now, it's properly mirrored for HTV. I won't forget that again... or will I?

Hit Send and watch it cut. Weed away the background material. 

When I placed the design on the material, because it was to be at the top of the material and I wanted it to heat evenly, I added a scrap of the material above the top of the main piece then covered everything with a teflon sheet before pressing. 

The extra scrap piece above the main piece may not have been necessary, but it did ensure that the press was completely flat and touched all parts of the HTV. 

So that's the story of HTV done wrong (top) and done right (bottom). Don't forget to mirror your project when cutting HTV!

HAPPY CRAFTING!

Let's Embroider Baseball Caps!

 

"Spoiler" of the completed project.  

My husband is nearly bald and really ought to wear hats every day. To that end, I have decided to make him a set of ball caps that he'll wear daily. The caps are in Black, Burgundy and Navy Blue because he most often wears shirts in those colors.

The biggest challenge with embroidering on baseball is getting the design set up correctly and hooping the hat properly - no wrinkles and held tightly against the hoop. 

My Redline 1501 is definitely the machine to handle the ball caps. I have other home machines that do embroidery, but none of them has a cap hoop, which is what it required to properly sew a ball cap.

Redline set up for embroidering using regular hoop. We need to remove the arms and install the cap hoop before it can start embroidering base ball caps. 

When installing the cap hoop, ensure that the rollers align with the track on the underside of the arm of the machine. If they fall below it, then the hoop will be too low and won't rotate properly. Also, you may not even be able to attach it to the hoop mover bar. 

The cap hoop requires a different stitch plate than the standard one. This is what I saw when I pulled the stitch plate off. Looks like someone (me) hasn't properly cleaned this area in a while. A few swipes with a little brush and some grabbing threads with tweezers cleaned this up efficiently. I also oiled the machine in all its oiling points. I have found that in Arizona, because the humidity gets so low oil evaporates much faster than in moister parts of the country. Therefore, oil all the machine's oiling points every usage session to keep it happy. I have to oil my other machines much more often, too. 

Left is the "normal embroidery" needle plate and on right is the cap hoop needle plate. Can you see the difference? Cap hoop plate sticks up more and the actual flat area near the needle hole is a much smaller circle. This is because baseball caps are curved surfaces.

Cap hoop and cap needle plate in place. There are catch releasers at the 10, 2 and 6 o'clock positions on the cap hoop. 

The Redline came with a cap hoop jig. This is a device that holds the cap hoop safely in position and allows you to put the cap on the hoop easily. I have my jig attached to the left side of the machine's stand. I'm not sure if the jig was designed to be placed there, but I put it there because I have nothing else to clamp it to and don't want to have it in another room away from the machine. The hoop has a metal band with spiky teeth that help hold the cap in place. 

Preparing the cap for embroidery. I have stuffed some stabilizer into the cap. The piece of stabilizer is much larger than the design, but it's nice to have extra stabilizer inside while embroidering in case the stabilizer shifts a bit while hooping. I also made sure I pulled the hat band out of the way because we don't want to embroider into the hat band (it's rather thick and could cause distortion in the embroidery if it were accidentally included in the embroidery)

Putting cap onto hoop. Try to align the center mark on that piece of metal with the center seam of the hat. Also, will need to push the hat band underneath that piece of metal. 

That's good: hat band underneath the piece of metal and the hat center aligned with the line. 

Pull the toothy metal band over the cap and lock in place as close to the brim as possible. Smooth out the hat so that there are no lumps. Binder clips work well on the bars sticking out from the hoop to hold the rest of the hat taught. 

Hat hooped nicely with binder clips in place  holding it tight against the hoop so that there are no wrinkles and little to no movement of the cap.

Cap hoop on machine. To get it in place, rotate the cap to the right enough to get the brim under the needles, then push into place. Select the hat embroidery file and the hat hoop (J). When you create a hat embroidery file and select the cap hoop, the Redline knows to flip the design upside down. The design should be shown upside down on the machine's screen. Trace the design to be sure that the hoop is in the correct position - hitting the toothy metal strap with the needle would break the needle and possibly damage the embroidering foot, so the trace is necessary to ensure that the design is embroidering far enough away from the hardware.

Action shot: first stitch on the cap. The light just barely manages to shine through because the cap's brim is in the way. 

All finished!!  Trim the stabilizer from the back of the embroidery and hand the hat over to hubby. 

HAPPY SEWING!!

Making Leather Earrings with Silhouette Cameo 4

 

I'd never imagined that making leather earrings could be so much fun and so quick for a project. I am not sure how many pairs I made, but I will tell you that they are surprisingly light - most of the earrings I made are around 2" tall and 1" - 1.5" wide. I'm not a fan of enormous earrings - I don't like them hitting my collar or getting caught in my hair - so I tried to keep them relatively small. 

The Synthetic Leather

For my earring-making adventure, I purchased the "SGHUO 30pcs Leather Earring Making Kit Include Faux Leather Sheets Glitter Metallic Leather Sheets and Tools for Earrings Craft Making Supplies" from Amazon. In addition to 30 different pieces of synthetic leather that measured slightly larger than dimensions given, it also came with some earring hooks, jump rings, pliers, thread snips, tweezers, bag, and a "jumper opener". 

• I really liked the synthetic leather assortment - good selection of colors and descent quality product.
• I am not a fan of glitter, so all I can say is that I was relieved that the glitter does NOT shed from the product. But if you like glittery stuff these no-shed glitter sheets will dazzle you. The metallic sheets have a bit of shine to them. The leopard prints are a thinner more plastic like material with lines carved in them reminiscent of fur. 
• The little bag is a reinforced plastic bag with a zipper. It is just the right size to hold the leather pieces and keep them reasonably organized. 
• I wasn't impressed by the tweezers - I think it's two pieces of stamped metal attached together at the top. They certainly are not for fine tweezing work as the points are rounded and much larger than expected. I tried using them for weeding vinyl, but had to switch to the tweezers that came with my serger to actually be able to grip the vinyl the way I wanted to grip it with the tweezers.
• The thread snips are about the same as other thread snips of similar design - OK in theory, but don't expect them to be super effective. The can cut threads, but were challenged by the leather. I'm not sure why they were included in the package, but there they were. 
• The pliers are regular jewelry-making pliers and work well for opening and closing jump rings. I had another pair of similar pliers but have mis-placed them, so it's nice to have pliers in my Silhouette Cameo tools pile. 
• The "jumper opener" is a ring with slots in it which you wear on the tip of your finger and use to help hold the jump ring while opening or closing it in theory. I either haven't mastered the art of using the device or something because the jump rings never stayed in the ring's grooves long enough for me to use it to hold anything. It's big enough to wear as a pinky ring, but I believe it's meant to be worn near the tip of the index finger of your non-dominant hand. 
• The earring wires and jump rings set consists of 5 colors: gold plated, silver, steel, black and a dark gray color metal. Color selection : awesome. Metals quality: meh. I liked the idea of having a good selection of different colored earring wires to allow color coordination between the wires and the synthetic leather pieces. I found several wires missing their coil and ball. I also had one set of wires that were intertwined in a strange enough way that I could not separate them. Several of the earring wires had such delicate metal that the loop at the bottom of the wire broke off when I handled it. My ears are sensitive (pierced over 35 years ago) and so I noticed that the back ends of the wires scratch against my skin and certain color wires made my ears itch a little bit. Usually the itchy ears indicates that the wires are not pure but rather are plated with one metal but have another as the main metal - one often sees this with cheap gold ear wires which have gold plating and a nickel interior. 

Summary

All in all, I think the set was worth what I paid. That is, I got my money's worth with all of the pieces of synthetic leather, especially since they were a smidge larger than dimensions given and are of reasonably good quality relative to the price paid. The little zippered bag is great for storing the leather so it doesn't wind up in a messy pile. So even ignoring the other items included in the package, I'm satisfied with what I paid.

Wires

If you have sensitive ears like me, stick with the silver and steel wires. You can test the other ones to see if they bother you, but be forewarned that the other wires are similar to the really cheap earrings we've all tried and found we could not wear. I can't guarantee that the silver and steel looking wires are what I'm calling them, but I can say that my ears are OK with them. The gold, brassy and black wires slightly irritate my ears, so test all 5 types to determine your ears' opinion of them and judge accordingly. You may have to find your own ear wires that work for you. 

Machine Settings

I adjusted my auto-blade settings slightly from the default settings for leatherette. The lesser blade depth did not cut through, and I found the higher force helped push the blade down into the material. I also chose a slower speed to ensure the blade had time to cut. The settings worked for me and cut through all the leathers pieces with nice clean cuts. 

• Force: 33
• Speed: 3
• Passes: 2
• Blade Depth: 8

I read on some web pages that you should cut synthetic leather with the pretty side down. I tried that on a few pieces, but found it cut better pretty side up. 

One word of caution: never cut glitter materials glitter side down because the glitter will stay on your mat and reduce its stickiness.

Be sure to use a relatively new mat that's very sticky, especially if the design has a lot of fine details. After I learned about reducing the stickiness of the mat by putting glitter synthetic leather glitter side down, I had several accidents that ruined a few pieces of synthetic leather because it came unstuck from the mat and got all bunched up. If your material comes unstuck from the mat and starts folding up under the cutter, immediately hit the "pause" button (looks like a sideways = sign), and remove the mat. Check the blade to be sure nothing got stuck in it, and check the machine to be sure all little pieces that came off the material have been removed from the machine bed. 

If your mat is losing its stickiness and you don't have new mat, you can use masking tape to hold the material down along the top and sides. This will work OK for simple shapes, but any with a lot of interior cutting may still wind up lifting off the not so sticky mat. Sometimes the cut will turn out OK even with a little lifting, but it won't look as nice as one that stayed stuck to the mat the whole time.

Earrings!

I made a pair of flower shaped earrings from the pink "fine" glitter material.

I used a free SVG from Design Bundles called "Flower-3.svg" to create them. The background is a plain brown synthetic leather piece. 

 

This is a two layer earring. I am illustrating it in the top earring by swinging the red teardrop away from the white one. This design came from a set of free cut files from "SewSimpleHome.com" 

This was a second design from the set of free cut files from "SewSimpleHome.com". Again, the white is a separate cut from the navy blue piece. I like the look of multiple layers. The background is the glitter "leather" from our leather set mentioned earlier.

This is an example of using both the very nice brown leather layered upon the leopard print material. The top earrings have the layers separated and the bottom illustrate what they look like when layered. The jury is still out as to whether I shall permanently separate them into single layer earrings because I'm not sure I like the color combination of that brown with the leopard print. The cut files for the earrings are here. The earrings are sitting on a piece of yellow glitter synthetic leather from my collection.

Butterfly in circle. I found this one at Craft House SVG, but the little details were a pain to weed out.

 If I had to do it again, I would have set the cutter to cut deeper or the pressure higher. I also would have used a new mat that isn't covered in glitter.

One important note that goes with this design: carefully remove the cactus from the inside of the other section because the cactus can be worn on its own. In fact, always check the shapes being weeded out when making earrings from leather because the negative spaces you remove can sometimes be used as their own designs.

This was a free design from Hey Let's Make Stuff of the Harry Potter "Deathly Hallows" symbol. Fun earrings. Default size is about 2.75", so next time I would make them smaller. 

These are made from the heavier glitter synthetic leather. I drew the teardrop design on the back of the material and cut with scissors. I wouldn't ask my Cameo to cut this material because the plastic-y glitter could damage the blade.

Showing back of the above glitter earrings. You can see the pen line where I drew the teardrop. The blue ones are larger and I don't like them as much as the pink because I think that the blue ones are a bit large for me. They may be fine for other people, but not my personal preference. Also, hand cut earrings don't come out as perfectly symmetrical as machine cut earrings.

Another example of a cut out design - the star - which can be used on its own as an earring, plus another double layer earring design with the cut out star being highlighted by the background blue piece. This earring file came from Amy Romeu's DIY Cricut Patriotic Earrings post.

I found that the easiest way to store my leather earrings was hanging them on a metal coat hanger that I am not using for anything else. It's wide enough to separate them so I can see each design. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that they will all gather to one side or the other if the hanger is bumped. Some may also fall off when you are pulling off the earrings you want to use for the day, so remove them slowly to avoid having to search for fallen earrings. 

HAPPY CRAFTING!!