What if you’re interested in textile data visualization, but you don’t know what textile to start with? The best answer is “try a few of them and see what you enjoy”. A common problem I see both with students and myself is over-analyzing it.
You can consult all the guides and resources and comparative charts, and come to a decision about which textile craft to pursue based on all kinds of factors, including what you can make with it, availability/cost of materials, ease of getting started, and speed for producing a final object. But then once you actually put your fingers to crafting that textile, you can discover that it just isn’t working for you. You hate doing it. And that’s an important discovery and completely fine.
Not every craft is right for everyone at every point in their life. For more than a decade after I started seriously engaging with textiles, I was quite certain that yarn crafts were not for me. They took so long and I absolutely did not have that much patience. Why knit a sweater over several months when you can sew one out of knit fabric in an evening? But I surprised myself when I eventually came around to it. And I surprised myself even more when, later still, I took up hand embroidery and found I loved it. I don’t think I was wrong in my earlier assessments of what would have worked for me then, but it’s worth keeping in mind that *‘not now’ doesn’t mean ‘never’.
Here are three different lenses you can consider as you think about what textile craft(s) to explore as a medium for data visualization: what can you make, what do you need, and how long does it take.
What can you make?
- Accessories: sewing (including quilting) can quickly generate tote bags, table runners, and curtains. On the yarn craft side, crochet has a lot to offer, including jewelry, handbags, kitchen dish towels, and the like. Towels are a common project for weaving. You can also take existing accessories and embroider them. Needle felting is another option for making things like hats and handbags.
- Clothes: For professional-looking, tailored clothes, sewing using woven fabrics is what you need. Sewing/serging with knit fabric can create comfortable, everyday clothes. Knitting produces a drapey, comfortable fabric for sweaters and other garments. Crochet is another yarn-craft option for garments, but you tend to end up with stiffer, bulkier fabric, so it’s better for outerwear, structured pants, and the like.
- Blankets: Quilting (sewing woven/non-stretchy fabric) is the most common approach to sewn blanket-making, and goes well with embroidery. There are many patterns for knitting and crochet blankets; crochet blankets tend to be a little thicker since they use more yarn. Weaving can be an option for blankets, if you have a very wide loom or sew together several narrower woven strips.
- Stuffed toys: Crochet is widely used for creating stuffed toys, since it is easy to create 3D shapes with crochet. It is possible to knit stuffed toys, but there are fewer patterns and resources. Sewing is also an option; many knit stuffed toys also require sewing. While they won’t be squishy or stuffed, you can use needle felting to make small figures or toys.
What do you need?
- Garment Sewing / Quilting (woven/non-stretchy fabric): A standard sewing machine. You can get a basic but fully functional model for under $200. More expensive machines work better on thicker fabrics, have more built-in stitch patterns, and generally are less fiddly. Many makerspaces have basic sewing machines available. Woven fabric is cheap and widely available; to start with, you can even work with materials like old bed sheets. If you’re using thrifted or repurposed material, fabric can be (close to) free. Good quality quilting cotton with interesting designs can be close to $20/yd. High-quality fabric intended for garments can be more (upwards of $50 for specialty fabrics). You’ll also need needles and thread (getting good quality and not the cheapest available will save you a lot of hassle).
- Garment Sewing (knit/stretchy fabric): In principle you can use a basic, standard sewing machine for sewing knit (stretchy) fabric, but especially for beginners, odds are the seams will end up looking weird and rumpled. A better tool is a serger ($200-300), a specific kind of sewing machine that cuts the edge of the fabric as it sews and creates a stretchy seam. You’ll also need a coverstitch machine ($500-600) to finish the hems of knit fabric. Knit fabric usually runs $15-20/yd and tends to have fewer interesting patterns than woven fabric, though you can order Custom fabric online for $20-30/yd. Sergers and coverstitch machines use thread cones and specific needles designed to slip between the threads of knit fabric rather than puncturing it.
- Knitting: All you need to get started is one pair of knitting needles and some yarn, and probably some stitch markers. The complicated part is that the thickness of the yarn determines the size of the knitting needles you should use. (This is often written on the packaging of the yarn, and knitting patterns will tell you.) Knitting needles are usually wood or metal; you may want to try both to see whether you prefer the grippiness of wood or the slippiness of metal. All the knitting stitches stay on the knitting needle, so for a large project, you’ll end up with a lot of stitches and may want to use circular knitting needles — needles with a cable between them. (I knit everything on circular needles because I like being able to push the stitches onto the cable when I put the work down, to make it less likely they’ll slip off the needle.) A single pair of knitting needles can cost $6-$15, and over time you’ll probably end up buying many different sizes. Yarn can vary wildly, from under $5 for a giant ball of acrylic yarn to $30+ for a relatively small skein of hand-dyed natural fiber (e.g. wool, alpaca, etc.)
- Crochet: Many of the same issues described above for knitting apply here too — you’ll need crochet hooks of different sizes depending on the yarn you work with. One nice thing about crochet is that the stitches don’t stay on the hook, so if you want to take a break from a project, you can use the same hook you were using for a new project. Crochet hooks can have ergonomic handles that drive up the price, but you can get a single one for under $5, or a set of most common sizes for under $15.
- Machine Knitting: A circular knitting machine can cost $50-$150; a flat knitting machine starts around $500 but can go into multiple thousands of dollars. (A used digital knitting machine will probably be over $1000 if you can find one.) Knitting machines can use a more limited range of yarn, because machines don’t come with needles in different sizes like you can do with hand knitting. That said, a solid Addi-Express circular knitting machine (around $100) can be a very reliable and accessible tool for textile craft particularly for those with childhood craft-trauma: if you can crank a handle, you can make a scarf.
- Weaving: The tools you need for weaving can cost nothing (recycling a cardboard box for simple tapestry weaving), or up to several thousand dollars. If you have access to a laser cutter or 3D printer, there are models you can use for a simple Tapestry loom (also known as a frame loom); you can also 3D print an Inkle loom that lets you weave narrow bands. With the least-expensive looms, you’ll be manually moving the yarn over and under the vertical warp threads; more expensive options let you pass yarn through openings the loom creates. Looms that can create multiple variations of these openings (e.g. lifting different combinations of vertical warp threads) tend to be more expensive. Wider looms that let you weaving a wider piece of fabric are also more expensive. A 15” wide Rigid heddle loom that gives you two kinds of openings is around $250; a similar 4-shaft loom that gives you 14 possible openings is around $760. You can start weaving for free by cutting slits in a piece of cardboard and wrapping it with any yarn or string.
- Needle Felting: A comprehensive beginner needle felting kit with a small pad, multiple kinds of needle holders (e.g. single-needle, multi-needle), a few different sizes of needle, finger protection (important!) and some basic wool roving costs around $25. You can get replacement needles for under $10 for 100 needles. Felting wool can be coarser (and cheaper) than nicer wool you’d want to use for spinning, and you need less of it. You can get a pack with small quantities in many different colors for around $15.
- Spinning: The easiest way to get started with spinning without buying a lot of equipment is using a Drop spindle, which can be purchased for as little as $15 or 3D printed. Drop spindles are affordable and portable, but do require you to pause and wind the spun yarn onto the spindle, which for me interrupts the flow of the craft. There are several kinds of Spinning wheels but they have the disadvantage of being large and expensive ($600-$2000). E-spinners ($150-300) are a compact, more affordable option. If you’re taking up spinning to save money on yarn, think again: unless you’re able to invest in even more tools for cleaning and preparing fiber, the “ready to spin” wool and other fibers is not much cheaper than buying finished high-quality yarn. The advantage of spinning it yourself is customizability more than cost.
- Hand embroidery: Embroidery typically involves a hoop for stabilizing the fabric (usually under $5, can get it online for as little as $1.50 if you order several), needles, and thread, along with a base fabric. You can get a cheap kit for around $20 with all the supplies along with some instructions and a sampler design (something you can use to practice the stitches). If you find you enjoy this craft, it’s worth upgrading to high-quality embroidery floss where the color won’t bleed if it’s washed, and the threads separate easily. (DMC embroidery floss is $1-2 each.) You can embroider on any woven fabric (see sewing above); some kinds of embroidery like cross-stitch or other counted embroidery (where you’re counting, sewing, and cutting specific numbers of threads in the base fabric) needs specific fabric. Aida cloth is commonly used for cross-stitch, comes in multiple colors, and costs $5-10 for enough for a project. If you want to add beads to your embroidery, beading thread costs $2-5 for a bobbin that will last a while, a tube of high-quality beads goes for $2-7 and beading needles cost $1-2.
- Machine embroidery: A home embroidery machine will cost more based on the maximum embroidery size. The cheapest 4”x4” machine is close to $600; a 5”x7” machine is around $1200. There is open source software for creating machine embroidery patterns, but you may want to budget a few hundred more for specific embroidery software. You’ll need tear-away stabilizer (a $20 roll should last a while) and polyester machine embroidery thread (you can get a set of many colors for $30-50).
How long does it take?
Assuming you’ve got around 2 hours/day to devote to the craft, and are able to put in that time most days, here’s some rough estimates for finishing projects once you have some basic skills under your belt:
- Fast (< 1-2 days): sewing a simple garment (woven or knit fabric), machine embroidery, doing a small and simple needle felting design
- Medium (< 1 week): sewing a complex garment (woven or knit fabric), knitting / crocheting a small accessory or stuffed toy, weaving something small, knitting / crochet a simple garment with chunky yarn, making a small and simple hand embroidery, doing a medium-sized or medium-complexity needle felting design
- Slow (< 1 month): knitting / crocheting a simple garment with medium-weight yarn, making a medium-sized or medium-complex hand embroidery, spinning a skein of yarn, weaving something larger or more complex, making a quilted accessory (e.g. bag, table runner, etc.)
- Very slow (multiple months): making a quilt, knitting / crocheting a simple garment with sock / fingering-weight yarn, doing a large and complex hand embroidery