Your first sew-out on a Brother

You will sew StitchCraft’s orientation and scale sheet, TS-01, on a Brother machine such as the PE800, and check that its size and direction are exactly right. It takes about twenty minutes.

You need

• StitchCraft, installed.
• A Brother embroidery machine that reads PES files from a USB stick, and a hoop that sews at least 120 × 120 mm, such as the PE800’s 5 × 7 in hoop.
• Medium-weight woven cotton, medium tear-away stabilizer, a 75/11 embroidery needle, 40 wt polyester thread (black shows the lines best), white bobbin thread.
• A ruler or calipers with millimetres.

1. Write the file

$ stitch testsheet TS-01 -o TS-01.pes
TS-01 · Orientation and scale
  file      TS-01.pes (PES v1, 1587 bytes)
  sha256    854cde9f533e3b6567afb570a0eb3d4547e7813f5649da97d27be104f8cd18c6
  profile   brother-pe800-5x7 (Brother PE800 with its 5 × 7 in hoop)
  size      120.0 × 120.0 mm
  stitches  274 stitches, 7 jumps, 6 trims, 0 colour changes, 0 stops
  threads   1. Black (#000000), shown as Brother PEC 20 "Black"
after sewing, check:
  - The F reads normally: not mirrored, not upside down, not turned.
  - Each arm of the cross measures 100.0 ± 0.5 mm end to end, horizontally and vertically.
  - The corner squares measure 10.0 mm on every side.
  - Ticks are 10 mm apart; the long ticks mark the ends and the centre.

That is real output: this page is regenerated from StitchCraft itself, so the checksum is the one your file will have. The checksum is how a sew-out report names exactly the bytes that were sewn. Every test sheet is in the test sheets reference; stitch testsheet --list lists them too.

2. Look at it first

$ stitch preview TS-01.pes -o TS-01.png
TS-01.png · 992 × 992 pixels
  from      TS-01.pes · PES (#PES0001) · "TS-01"
  style     realistic, 8 pixels per millimetre

The picture is drawn from the file itself, at the exact positions the machine will use, so this is what you should see in the hoop. Add --style simple to see every stitch, needle hole, trim and jump instead: the way to check a design before you sew it.

3. Load it on the machine

Copy TS-01.pes to a USB stick, plug it into the machine and select the design. The machine should show it at 120 × 120 mm, with an upright “F” in the top-left quarter. If it does not list the file at all, stop here and report that — it is the most important thing this sheet tests.

4. Hoop and sew

Hoop the fabric and stabilizer drum-tight, centre the design, attach the hoop, and sew. The machine sews the cross first, then the “F”, then the four corner squares, trimming between parts if it can.

5. Check

Measure the sew-out against the TS-01 checks. stitch testsheet printed the same list when it wrote the file.

6. Tell us

File a Sew-out report on GitHub with photos of the front and back (a ruler in view), your measurements, and anything odd (machine testing).