This week I’ve been quite industrious (well, more than I have been anyway!) and have managed to complete quite a few things for Clobber Creations ranging from fruit protectors to bath hats!  However, I want to reflect on the process of recording my free machine embroidery.

I find recordings of free machine embroidery quite mesmerising, and I’d voiced an interest in having a go at some point.  My dad pointed out that my camera could record video as well as take pictures, so the lack of video camera was not an issue.  I just needed to think about what I wanted to record and when to do it.

I thought that this aspiration was something I would play around with in September.  However, I began to put a Christmas card design into practice this week and thought, “why not record it?”

Fortunately, I have a tripod, which meant I could set up the camera behind me to one side.  I began with a full recording of the design make, from tracing the design to stitch ‘n’ tear, to colouring in.  However, I noticed the image was quite far away, so I had a go at recording zoomed in too.

A few things I learnt from this experience:

1. Manual focus.  I thought that I would want my camera to do auto focus, but for the close up version, it kept focusing on my hands instead of the design.  manual focus meant that the camera stayed focused on the area surrounding the machine’s needle.
2. Time Stretch.  This is what it’s called in Adobe Premier Elements.  I wanted the clips to fit into the length of a song and my free machining speed is not quite on par with this!  Using time stretch helped.  The close up video was sped up by 250%, which is a nice speed (and meant that people didn’t believe it was sped up), but the main video had to be sped up by 600%, which is a bit jarring…
3. Public domain music.  I figured that most people wouldn’t want to hear the loud thuds coming from my sewing machine, so I searched for music which I could use for free, which I found at Free Music Archive.  I was surprised and delighted to find songs which were appropriate.

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It is very early for Christmas but I couldn’t resist publishing the videos and card straight away.  You can view the close up and start to finish stag videos on youtube.  The card is available on etsy.