#what I read on it doesn't even sink in 99% of my checks of it but that does not matter I can just check it again because it is there

[the-force-awakens]

Yes yes yes!!!! Even in the movies, the whole “at least he’s not on fire!” “What’s left of him isn’t on fire!” scene to me felt very much like a friendly/familial bickering, they weren’t being rude or mean to each other, they were both a little shocked at the state of everything and that’s how they communicate

They!!Are!!Friends!!And!!Love!!Each!!Other!!

Yes, exactly! Even when they're bickering, they're both very visibly enjoying themselves. Poe's barely restraining the urge to smile, you can see it in his eyes, and Rey doesn't even try to stop herself from smiling when she whips out the "you're difficult". Poe's also smiling when he approaches her, even as he starts being sarcastic??? Like...they like each other, they just bicker as a love language?

Like these are not the expressions of two people who hate each other. They're exasperated by each other right now, sure, but the banter is so familiar for them by this point that they're also enjoying it underneath the frustration.

It also irks me (but just goes to show how frankly astoundingly little the fandom actually pays attention to these characters/can't read them) because we know what Poe and Rey look like when they're interacting with characters they hate/cannot stand...and that energy is not here?

by contrast, think of poe's expression uh. any time he's dealing with the first order, or his anger with holdo when he believes she's just leading them to their deaths. think of rey's absolute fury at teedo or legitimately any interaction with ren (barring the five minutes she gave him the benefit of the doubt and he instead chose to be the one true dick) - Rey does not minimize her anger or frustration with people. She sure as hell doesn't smile smugly at people she hates and can't stand, she's a feral little sand gremlin and if she doesn't like you, you're gonna fucking know it.

And altho their banter/bickering match does deteriorate into a genuine argument, let's see what else happens here shall we? Poe puts his two cents in ("you're the best fighter we have, we need you. out there, not here") and walks away before it can get any worse, allowing them to cool off. And Rey is visibly okay with this, she doesn't look worried when Poe walks off, instead she just has that "fuck my friend rightfully called me out on my shit that I don't want to unpack yet" look. Like, Rey is the queen of abandonment issues - after knowing Finn for a day, him leaving in tfa was enough to hurtle her into a traumatic flashback turned Force vision; and there's no doubt the throne room made that worse.

And look, I'm also the queen of abandonment issues, it's one reason why I relate so heavily to Rey. Which is why Rey's lack of a reaction to Poe walking away strikes me so profoundly: because Rey isn't afraid he won't come back. It takes a seriously deep level of friendship to achieve that. I experience that with my qpps 99% of the time, and that other 1% is when my anxiety is really awful but even underneath that I know they won't leave me. Rey seems as confident in Poe not leaving her as a friend, as I am my committed platonic life partners. Let that sink in for a minute.

which is just another point for me for my qpp jedistormpilot hc tyvm

What happens after that, is that when Rey decides to leave to find the wayfinder, she isn't surprised when Poe shows up to (as far as she knows, tho we know he and finn were planning on going) say goodbye, and immediately makes sure they're on good terms before she leaves, just in case.

Poe also checks in on her before they leave because he notices she's acting strangely/drinking in the scenery like she won't see it again, and promptly spends...a lot of the movie worrying about her?

He grounds her several times in the novelization(s).......but is also one of the reasons Rey snaps in the desert with Ren and the transport. In the junior novelization (iirc), she thinks about all the horrible things Ren has done to her and her friends, and one of the things she thinks before she loses control is how he tortured Poe. And then (I can't remember in which novelization) it's Poe's voice who snaps her out of her shell-shocked daze following the transport blowing up. In the regular one, he also gently tells her in the ship to go take a minute and he'll take care of the flying so she can just....have a breather and process what happened and doesn't hold what happened against her in the least (which we also see in the movie).

And BONUS points he trusts her instinctively aboard the Steadfast when she gets a Force feeling (I think the line in the novel is something like "when she got that look, a fellow knew he ought just to follow"? Or it may have been another scene I can't remember). Like.....they're friends. I don't know how much more explicit the movie could have made it, unless folks wanted them sharing a secret handshake or wanted them to briefly pause the movie to add a powerpoint presentation text above their heads going "they're friends". They bicker and they argue and they get exasperated with each other, especially over their similarities (because Rey is a lot like Poe), but they genuinely love and care for one another, and to be quite honest saying otherwise is a huge fucking disservice to how much Daisy and Oscar put into crafting their dynamic.

[20dollarlolita]

Howdy! Hope you're doing alright, all things considered.

I was wondering, I've got a 4x4 Babylock Sofia 2 A-line - do you know if I'd be able to use the spring action hoops on it? I'm having a lot of trouble finding them to begin with (and not just standard machine hoops and spring-loaded hand sewing hoops), let alone what's compatible with my ol' gal 😮‍💨

I appreciate your help either way!

PS. Do you think a tutorial for the execution of larger files with smaller hoops may ever happen? I've tried to read up on it but it hasn't quite clicked enough to try it and I'd love to see how you would do it (not to be a kiss ass but your tutorials have made so much more sense and helped me more than 99% of other media consumed on the same subjects).

For repositionable hoops for the Sofia (and this also goes for people who own the Baby Lock Verve and Aurora, as well as most Brother 4x4 machines), I recommend the DIME Snap Hoop Monster. It's a magnetic hoop.

There's three kinds of Brother/Baby Lock hoop attachments, so make sure you're buying the right kind. There's the slide-in one that you see on most machines 6x10 or larger, there's the one where the pins are on the hoop, and the ones where the pins are on the embroidery arm. Nothing like getting your shiny new hoop home and finding that it doesn't fit your machine.

If you have software, the first thing that I'd do is check to see if it has design splitting built in.

When I'm making something bigger than my biggest hoop, I make a custom hoop that's the size of my finished product, and I split it after.

This automatically tries to find the best place to split, calculates how much overlap I need between hoopings, and places alignment stitches at the start and end of each block. Sometimes it makes decisions that it doesn't handle very well, like how it deletes stop commands if it has to split an applique. However, it's pretty okay for things like this, where it's able to split between motifs most of the time.

I'm using the Mega Endless Hoop here, which has its own problems. Notably, it doesn't grip particularly tightly, which can lead to puckering and other problems. It requires fusible or sticky stabilizer applied to the entire piece before you hoop, and all I had was Power Mesh, which is intended for much lower stitch counts. I might get some small and powerful magnets and use them to increase clamping power on the hoop, but I haven't tried it yet.

Having a way of telling the machine where it's sewing in reality (viking calls it Design Positioning, Pfaff calls it Precise Positioning, Bernina calls it Perfect Placement, and I can't for the life of me remember what Brother and Baby Lock call it) really helps. It means that my alignment markers have to be in roughly the correct position, but that I have some wiggle room to adjust to get my needle to be right on my marker.

If your machine doesn't have the ability to tilt the design (mine doesn't) then you need to get the piece in the hoop as straight as possible. What I do for that is to get one marker lined up, and then sink the needle. With the needle down, you can pivot the fabric without losing your placement. This is also the only time that I find those clear plastic hoop alignment guides to be any use at all. If you've lost yours, like I have, you can stretch a rubber band across the hoop and make sure that it's even, and then line up with the rubber band. On a long project like this, I will also iron in a crease across the length of the design, to be a marker. You can also use a pen or chalk to mark that. My hoop has center marks molded into it, so if I can line my center line up with my center marks, then I know my piece is straight enough, and I just have to match the corner marks.

I definitely recommend doing a test run, which will let you spot trouble areas and make some overall design adjustments. It'll also give you experience with how the multiple hoopings work. Especially if you're just using a 4x4 hoop, there's a learnign curve to doing this. Doing a test run means that you won't be in a situation where the first hoopings are bad and the last hoopings are really good. You'll be more even across the board.

This piece here has taught me a lot of things. When I have a chance, I'm going to go through all of it in my software and fix things. Most of that fixing is just adjusting the size of things or how close they are to each other, but there's some some changes to fills and lines and density as well. I need to change how the gold squares are built to try to cut down on the puckering. Because I was watching as this stitched out, I noticed that the piece was much flatter before the line was stitched out. I think that changing that line will reduce puckering. Being able to sit with the physical copy in my hand while I go through the project on the computer is very helpful.

I'll also probably be layering some stabilizer in this. If I do fusible cut-away instead of fusible mesh, the designs will be better supported, but the piece will hang differently. It's all about balancing the pieces with each other.

The corner markers can be easily removed, or incorporated into the seam allowance and hidden.

If you have very detailed pieces to build, you can also do what a lot of Kimberbell pieces do, and just stitch out the whole piece with overlapping edges. You'll build a seam allowance that has part of the design, and then you can sew the finished pieces together and perfectly match the seams. This is probably a long easier, but does mean that you'll have seams all over your piece.

But I'd definitely start with either a piece that's pre-split by the maker, or one that's split by a machine and that adds the markers for you, before you try to yolo one on your own.

And, for what it's worth, if you have an applique that has to stretch over two hoopings, it's a really good idea to pre-cut that if at all possible. You can do it where you just hold the fabric off to the side on each side, or where you cut the fabric and splice it together, but pre-cut is the way to go. On the final one, I'm probably going to export the applique shapes on my Cricut, because having the fabric fused to the piece will make re-hooping a lot easier.

[mctreeleth]

It is becoming more and more apparent that I cannot draft a sleeve cuff for the shirt I am making for the medieval fair that is both the aesthetic that I want and compatible with wearing my watch underneath, which means I will need to either find a smaller, flatter watch that fits nicely under a long slim cuff, or spend the whole day in the sensory hell that is not being able to check my wrist for the time every three seconds, lest I fall out of the linear time stream entirely.