We recently connected with Lex Torgerson and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lex, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

When I was little, I did crafts with my grandmother a lot. Mostly sewing. Still do even! When I was in middle school, I started reading Japanese comics and watching anime. Of course it only made sense to combine the two when I heard about “cosplay.” Then right after high school, I started offering commissioned work. After a few years, cosplay got really really popular and everyone was doing it really competetively while I was mostly doing it for fun. I can’t take the heat whether I’m sewing for myself or someone else, so I quit doing that, and stuck to sewing the occasional piece for friends.
I worked at a tailor shop for almost two years, and a leather craft goods store for a year after that. Both helped me learn new things about clothing and materials. At the end of my time at the tailor shop, I went to a sewing expo for work. I didn’t even know that embroidery machines were a thing before then! Luckily for me, I won a gift card to a sewing center, and was able to get my own low-end single-needle machine.
I learned to use a free – yet outdated and very clunky – digitizing program to see if it was something I could learn. Since I was already familiar with most art programs, it came easily to me! Everyone I’d met at the sewing expo was talking about how hard digitizing was, so I was expecting it to be tedious! It’s still my favorite part of the process. I get to be as much of a perfectionist as I want and memorize a bunch of finicky little commands – it’s really fun for me! I often go back and revise files that I made months or years back, because I’m still learning all the time what stitches best and when effects I can do. Now I used a professional software because the free software was in very early development and was no longer being worked on. It was a little hard to translate the inputs of the free software to the newer one, but once everything made sense, I could never go back. I practiced digitizing with that one by participating in online gift exchanges!
The machine was also very easy – easier than a regular sewing machine in my opinion. My least favorite part was having to stand by to change thread colors since it was a single-needle. When customers would order something with more than a couple color changes, I got so tired of those patterns.
Now I have a large, 10-needle machine that I don’t have to change every single time! I still have to stay nearby in case the thread breaks, though. The real challenge with this one has been figuring out which needles and threads work best to reduce thread breakage. I didn’t believe the salesperson at the sewing center about that, and bought a big starter pack of the thread I’d previously bought only as needed. I also bought some very cheap pre-filled bobbins. Big mistake!! I got a big helping of “I told you so” that I deserved!
It’s also important to take care of more maintenance that the single-needle. You have to really make sure you take good care of all the moving parts very carefully! Clean it regularly, make sure certain parts are oiled, all of that sort of thing. Neglecting that can cause anything from minor annoyances to the breaking of the more fragile parts.
The parts are also more precisely manufactured, and it’s hard to get replacements if something breaks. The first year that I had it, a piece broke that is not supposed to be breakable. It was deemed a manufacture defect, so I was relieved that I didn’t mess up the maintenance. However, it still meant that I’d be several weeks without my machine. That was very hard to learn since no one warned me about maintenance times. I had an art show to make products for coming up, and I ended up with a very small selection.

Lex, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As I said before, I’d done many craft type of things, mainly sewing-related. Then when I got my first machine, I really enjoyed making little patches for costumes or just messing around testing the different stitches I could do.
A video game that I became a huge fan of had the most perfect thing to turn into a sew-on patch, so I immediately made one and posted it online. People started wanting their own with different characters, so I happily obliged. This was so hugely important to my business! I sincerely think that were it not for this item, I wouldn’t still be able to do this!
Machine embroidery is what it sounds like – embroidery done with a machine. But it’s not just a matter of put in an image and press a button! A lot of people seem to think it’s “cheating” compared to hand embroidery, but it’s really really not. It’s a completely different thing! It’s not just drawing on the computer, either, which is also something I do. Some people also criticize those who buy pre-digitized files instead of making their own, and I think that’s unfair as well! I’ve had other creators complain about them to me, expecting me to join in, but it’s to each their own, really. They’re also two different skills.
Describing it makes it sound both easier and harder than it is. The closest art program to it would be Adobe Illustrator or any other vector-based program. You put points down on x- and y-axes, and then toggle how those points connect to eachother. Whether it’s a stick-straight line, a curve that’s the same on either side, or asymmetrically curved, and what fills in the space. Any line can be turned into a sort of repeating stitch. Most often a zigzag, or “satin,” stitch. Those will be familiar to any sewist, really! Then if it’s a closed area, where the endpoints are kind of locked together, you can fill it in with different stitches. The name I learned for the basic fill stitch is a “tatami stitch” because it looks like a woven tatami rug. That what the program I used to use called it, and the one I use now doesn’t call it anything in particular, it just has a sequence number. The fill stitches come in all sorts of pre-made patterns. You can change the density of the pattern, you can use two or more colors to make a gradient, you can change the direction of the grain, all that stuff. Then for either type of stitch you can choose to have an underlay – 99% of the time – which helps secure the fabric to the stabilizer before sewing the main part. Without an underlay, the pattern can end up crooked because the fabric will pucker.
Stabilizer is a material for making sure the pattern stays stable and doesn’t make the fabric get weird. Different jobs require different thicknesses, and there are types that have adhesive or melt in the water as well.

As for what sets me apart, I think it’s maybe not necessarily a good thing, really. I really struggle with chronic fatigue. I have no problem telling people when I can’t (or don’t want to) do something. I’m very hard to negotiate my time with. Of course I try to be polite! But, sometimes I come off really flatly when I don’t mean to! I’ve been told quite often, both online and in person, that I sound robotic or that I talk/type as though I’m “in an HR meeting.” I think it’s funny, though, I don’t take offense! In high school I helped my mom’s workplace with administration tasks that were quite long and involved talking to hundreds of people a day. I try to have as much of a cover over my irritability as she still does, but I think I gave up on it a little in the last few years. I’m absolutely 100% sure where this problem comes from, so it’s something I do work on constantly.
I used to (I don’t do art shows anymore) bring my more chipper friend with me to art shows, she’s been my best friend since high school! Her illustration work is incredible!! She helped me warm up to talking to strangers for the day, preventing me from being visibly annoyed without meaning to, and I used to step in when a customer was rude to her about her artwork.
So, basically, I’m just not much of a people-person. I certainly don’t take pride in it like some do. I certainly enjoy talking to and being around people!

I genuinely love when a customer comes to me with a really complex project, and I go from figuring out how to tell this person “I don’t think this can work as embroidery,” to seeing a way to make it happen! I have some pieces that I’m extra proud of. It just takes patience and trial and error! Despite being hard to negotiate with, I hardly actually say “no.” I hate disappointing people more than anything. That’s also gotten me in a bit of trouble before. Sometimes I think I can pop something out really quick, and then either it doesn’t work, or I need to re-work more times than I anticipate.

I have customers send me bitmap (.bpm, .jpeg) or vector (.svg, .ai, etc.) format images to start with. If I see anything that won’t work at the size they’re requesting, I let them know that I need a revision on that. Then, I do sort of a quick and dirty mockup to see about how long it will take the end product to stitch. I find that charging in a “follow my heart” way works best for me. It’s a bit of a combination between the time and thread count. Then if the price sounds too high to me, I’ll take it down a little bit. I offer some wholesale flexibility if someone is looking to re-sell or lower pricing for scout troops, and I have a pretty low minimum quantity, but I can’t do a whole lot lower than my normal pricing. As for turning the image into a design, there’s not a better way to put it than sort of “tracing” the image with those x/y points I mentioned earlier. Most software can semi-reliably “auto-scan” an image and put something out. With vector formats, it can skip the scan and go straight to a stitch area because the design software is always based on vector imaging to begin with. For smaller designs with large blocks, it’s a perfectly valid starting point! But you’ll always have to tweak settings like density and the edges often come out with too many points, so you have to alter those as well. That’s not to say I think no one should use it! It’s not the equivalent to AI or anything. You do still have to tell it how you want it to read the image. Especially if you’re doing work for someone else.

A place with more than one machine, or “head,” can offer discounts because they can do three to six times more on a machine at once. A “head” is one set of needles, basically. The machine can only do one loadout per multi-head machine. The pattern gets stitched not by the head of the machine moving, but by arms that hold the hoop (like how a hand embroiderer puts fabric in a hoop only these can come in triangles or circles). Their minimum is based on how many can be done at once in the same giant hoop, or in a set of the same hoops per-head. If they did less than a certain amount, that’s time and possibly materials wasted that could be used on something else. These arms are on a motor, and it would be physically impossible to have each move separately. The needles move up and down, and the heads are on a motor that moves side-to-side depending on what needle # (color) is set to each part. They also, like my machine, or “single-head,” have 10 or more needles per head. They could have different colors on each head of needles, if the customer wants different colorways for the same patterns, but they can’t do, say, needle #1 on one machine and needle #4 on another, etc.

I also don’t really think of myself as a “brand,” and I don’t think I have “fans.” They’re definitely “customers” to me unless we’re doing a collaboration. I prefer if my customers buy my things because they genuinely want to use them. That’s a little bit of why I don’t have a lot of listings on my website. If someone requests a cosplay patch, I’ll make a regular listing, but I don’t really make things for any specific aesthetic or anything. . That sounds pretentious, I know, but I don’t mean it that way, truly. If I can’t do a project – whether it’s due to time, ability, or budget – I have others I can recommend to them! If they’re rude about it, I won’t send them to be rude to anyone else, however!

I have a handful of collaboration projects in my shop in addition to the cosplay items. These are collaborations I’ve done with artists. I’ve either commissioned the art from them, or they’ve come to me with an idea. They always keep the right to do anything else with their art, I don’t make them sell me exclusive rights. The only thing I usually put on the contract for exclusivity is embroidery related, and even that I’m really loose on. I’m really specific when I send my contracts, and I always allow back-and-forth. I’m not worried at all that someone else is going to screw me over, but I want them to know I have no plans of doing it to them. I want them to know that if I ever do something stupid, they can absolutely call me out on it. It’s also a good idea to be clear on who’s paying who, how often, and how that relates to usage rights. I give everyone a few options, along with the pros and cons, of options. Plus I belabor the point that they can always haggle with me. As much as I need to sell goods and services in order to live, I also need to enjoy other people being happy with whatever we work out. I really value all of the art I’ve gotten to handle whether it’s a collaboration, a personal piece, or a wholesale batch destined for re-sale. Every job teaches me a lot about how I can make everything look better, give it more depth, or represent the art style of the image.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Bad. The effect NFTs, which bitcoin is as well, it’s not just funny monkey images and such, have on everything is so unfathomable to me. Stolen art incidents aside, I don’t think people know enough about the impact as far as computing power. People don’t take time to learn how it actually works, or how rare success is with the investment. I’ve seen folks in my community lose their savings because they were promised it was the end of their financial troubles. It’s really heartbreaking when something that could have been neat is turned into a get-rich-quick grift.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

There are! There are a lot of really in-depth Youtube videos nowadays! I don’t make them myself, but I love watching the different ways people achieve the same result.

A few times, I’ve even had customers return so often, that they want to know if I have advice for them on possibly purchasing their own machine. I’m so happy when this happens! I love talking about it, and I think knowledge is important to share!

Unfortunately, the majority of embroidery software companies have terms where you’re not allowed to teach other people. They want people to pay for their technical services instead. But, I’ll still do it for the occasional person who asks. There are still Youtube videos for this, too, but I’ll see them get taken down occasionally.

Most of the time when someone has asked me, they couch it with apologies for asking, and that they get if I don’t want to share secrets. I’ve noticed this with other machine embroiderers wanting to get into digitizing than with people completely new to the craft. It makes me really sad that other people made us scared to have questions. In fact, this exists in most crafting areas. I got out of cosplay very quickly after starting because people my age were too mean. They forgot that the craft started by everyone sharing references and tips and material sources, and things like that. Then as I got older, I found that the older generation was quite unwelcoming with regards to handicrafts like knitting, quilting, and clothes-making. I think they were skeptical that we wanted to learn from them. I’m sure trade secrets being a make-it-or-break-it concept in past decades also contributed, but this was in hobby circles. This wasn’t true of everyone, of course! I had a lot of people willing to take me aside and teach me what they enjoyed.

My good friend, Michael Andersen, really inspired me to take sewing back up as a hobby again about a decade ago. He purchased a costume shop in St Cloud, MN several decades ago, with zero knowledge whatsoever of sewing! He was an engineer by trade originally, so his mind already worked very well with turning 2D concepts into 3D wearable items. He did small theater and mascot orders for organizations even several states away, and was a cornerstone of the downtown area. After decades, he lost his business because people thought, “why rent a costume for a party when we can buy one on Amazon?” His pieces were truly lovingly created. He sewed a replica of Cate Blanchett’s Queen Elizabeth I’s massive dress – mostly if not all stitched by hand! I remember the pleats on the skirt he said took weeks! He was such a perfectionist, too, even if someone else could do it quicker, he’d do it his way.

I was so angry when I found out that shop was being liquidated by two of the most condescending, evil women I’ve ever talked to. He was completed unfazed. That’s just the kind of guy he was. The kindest, most hard-working human being I’ve ever met, doing such undervalued labor in a field suddenly overtaken by cheap online shopping. He was past retirement age, but he immediately started volunteering at a senior center. Even through the early and harsh days of COVID, he remained kind and hardworking.

Unfortunately, that’s why he passed away – COVID complications despite making sure everyone was always at the least risk. Only a little bit before the vaccine became available to seniors. I’ll always treasure what he taught me about crafts, being kind to oneself, and most important, remembering to eat lunch. I still hold a grudge against our town. But, I know he wouldn’t. In fact, the last conversation we ever had was about having empathy for every living being. Not a mean or angry bone in his body.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.threadmancer.com
• Other: I occasionally stream my process on my twitch at twitch.tv/korianders, but usually it’s old video games.

Image Credits

Jen Vison