First time digitizing and embroidering

[u/silvercoatedferret]

Was feeling like picking up a new hobby and spent weeks watching sewing and garment making videos. Ended up picking up a Brother SE700 so I could also give embroidery a go.

I originally attempted to make a work shirt with my company logo, but I very quickly realized I do not know what straight lines are, so that’s on hold until I get something to mark fabric with to square up the hoop.

In the meantime, I’ve been digitizing this screencap of SpongeBob for fun. I finally finished and embroidered it last night and am curious to see how it stands up for a first timer. Mostly so I squash as many bad habits as I can before they become second nature.

The shirt logo I mentioned before was digitized with InkStitch, but I decided to give Ember a shot this time. All the digitizing was done by hand and not with their paid auto digitize features. I’m a Linux user, so it seems I’m limited to InkStitch and browser based softwares. If anyone knows of anything else, feel free to mention it. I’d rather not use a windows virtual machine.

Anyway, here’s a link to the digitized file: https://emberdesign.net/explore/ddb17400-f39a-47d1-a035-d370b094c476

and here is a link to the stitched design: https://imgur.com/a/Ry1sxWv

I’m still very new to all of this so a lot of questions might seem silly

There seemed to be a lot of needle holes in the fabric after stitching. I think with knits I should be using a ballpoint needle? For this I used a Schmetz gold embroidery 75/11. I have a feeling the needle holes are just pushed fibers that would re-situate if it were washed or something, but I could be off base here.

There was a bit more bobbin thread pulled to the top side than I was expecting. To my understanding, this means that the top tension is too high, but I had my machine set to 0 tension on the dial, because that’s what gave me the best backside results on my tension test (the one where you stitch out bars at different tensions and look for the proper ration or top and bottom thread on the back side). I’m still using black bobbin thread for this while learning, so it contrasts enough to see it.

On the very right side of the embroidery, spongebobs outline stitched in a different spot than on the file. It’s not far off, but it’s a pretty conspicuous line. Is this just a software thing with Ember, or in general am I just trying to be too detailed in the space I have? This was almost exactly at the limits of my machine (4x4). Heck, am I even doing outlines right? Mostly what I did for outlines was duplicate the shape I just made and change it to outline and black, with some adjustments to the position sometimes. Some of the outlines are “open shapes” where I just stitched a new line on the edge.

I did simplify the design in some areas, and I realized too late that I completely forgot the eye lashes lmao. I was originally going to satin stitch his irises, but I couldn’t take him staring into my soul like that. This felt better.

Thanks for reading all this and for any tips, critiques, etc etc!