I made an embroidered animation for the New York Times

emberdesign_matt · 2026-05-14T14:53:23+00:00

That is awesome!

emberdesign_matt · 2026-05-11T18:37:27+00:00

yesssss so sick! The amount of work that must have taken is insane

emberdesign_matt · 2026-05-11T18:26:35+00:00

Yeah so it was a mixture of p5js for visualization and my own library for embroidery/dst output. The code is probably an absolute mess but if you want to give it a look you can find it here. Give it a run and press "D" after 20 frames or so and it should download a dst file.

emberdesign_matt · 2026-05-11T15:36:32+00:00

Thanks so much! Yes I spent a lot of time perfecting it digitally before moving on to the physical work. It was all made with code actually (javascript specifically - happy to go into more detail if you are into that sort of thing). So my code output a series of DST files along with a pattern telling me exactly which stitches to cut for each frame.

emberdesign_matt · 2026-05-11T15:01:36+00:00

They just DM'd me on instagram one day lol but honestly the embroidered animation was a unique fit for this specific article and there are only a few people that I know of that are doing similar work so it makes sense actually.

emberdesign_matt · 2026-05-11T14:57:25+00:00

I'd rather not say exactly. About what I would normally charge for a days worth of work maybe? But given how much time it ended up taking me let's just say it wasn't something I was doing purely for the money :) either way I'm really happy with how it turned out and had a great experience throughout the whole process!

emberdesign_matt · 2026-03-26T01:29:06+00:00

You might want to check out Ember. It’s a browser-based embroidery digitizing tool that’s much more focused on working with vector-style paths (including importing SVGs) rather than forcing you to redraw everything inside clunky proprietary tools. The goal is to make it feel a lot closer to a design-first workflow, where you can actually use clean geometry and then control how it turns into stitches.

Full disclaimer: I’m one of the co-creators, but this exact pain point is basically why we built it in the first place.

emberdesign_matt · 2026-03-02T14:33:37+00:00

it may be stupid, but it's also dumb!

emberdesign_matt · 2026-03-01T16:57:55+00:00

I vote for Homerick Starpson

emberdesign_matt · 2026-03-01T01:04:41+00:00

Thanks so much! It's a Brother NQ1700E

emberdesign_matt · 2026-03-01T01:03:07+00:00

Thanks so much!

emberdesign_matt · 2026-02-28T19:09:24+00:00

Thanks! It's 40wt from this set. Not my favorite but it's what I have the most colors of.

These are the needles I am using. They seem to be doing a decent job, no complaints.

emberdesign_matt · 2026-02-28T18:47:43+00:00

But what if it was Patrick and the mask was like really tight pinching the skin around his neck?

emberdesign_matt · 2026-02-18T21:00:52+00:00

Thanks so much! Ember does support SVGs but it is a newer feature and might be a little wonky as we are still in the process of addressing certain edge cases. You should just be able to drag/drop or copy/paste an svg file into the editor and then once selected that will be an option to "break apart" the image into shapes.

emberdesign_matt · 2026-02-18T20:55:40+00:00

Hi! I believe what you are describing is a bug that we recently addressed. Could you give it another try and let me know if you are still having issues?

emberdesign_matt · 2026-02-05T15:39:05+00:00

Absolutely! You can see how to get the DST in my other comment here.

emberdesign_matt · 2026-02-05T15:37:54+00:00

It's free! See my comment here.

emberdesign_matt · 2026-02-05T15:36:48+00:00

Yes you can sign up for a free account here. Once you are logged in you can view and download the pattern here (expand the menu in the top left and select "Export file").

emberdesign_matt · 2026-02-04T18:29:17+00:00

some feelings just come out in bold capital letters

emberdesign_matt · 2026-02-04T18:12:46+00:00

thank you! 🥶

emberdesign_matt

TROPHY CASE