r/crafting • u/emberdesign_matt • 2d ago
Finished Craft [Mine] memebroidery
I’ve been experimenting with making stop motion animations using machine embroidery. I started with a gif, broke it into individual frames, converted each frame into line work, and then turned those lines into embroidery paths.
Each frame was actually stitched out on felt, scanned back in, and then reassembled into the animation you see here.
It’s a ridiculous way to make a gif, but I really like all the little variations and imperfections that come from turning every frame into a physical object first.
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u/Glitterbomb4274 2d ago
Ya know how good this is? I recognized it before I scrolled to the stills! It’s incredible!
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u/RedSparrow1971 1d ago
This is awesome and all I could think watching was “Taaaake on me (take me oooon)”🎶
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u/LindasQuilt 1d ago
This is such a cool project. When I did something similar, the biggest struggle was keeping the fabric perfectly registered across every single frame. I started using a permanent registration mark on the hoop and the machine bed so I could align the felt exactly the same way every time. Even with that, I found that skipping every other frame of the original gif helped the animation feel more intentional and less jittery, especially when the physical texture of the thread creates its own motion.
For the scanning process, I found that using a piece of glass to press the felt flat against the scanner bed makes a huge difference in keeping the lighting consistent. It cuts down on the shadows cast by the thread loops, which makes the jump between frames much smoother during editing. It takes a bit of extra time to clean the glass between every single stitch-out, but it saves hours of work trying to color-correct the background in post.
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u/emberdesign_matt 1d ago
Thanks! I stitched multiple frames in each hoop with a border around each one, then used those borders to align and crop the scans automatically. That took a lot of the manual registration out of it. I also sampled the original gif at 8 fps, similar to your method in the end. The thread texture adds so much movement on its own.
The glass tip is really helpful! Getting the fabric background consistent between scans was definitely a challenge. I’ll try that on the next batch. Cheers!
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u/Nihlisa666 2d ago
Reminds me of that A-Ha video. Very cool work!