Embroidery.
Look Ma, No Thimbles! | Brother LB5000
My sister was given a sewing machine for Christmas a few years back that was capable of making generic preprogramed designs inside of a small 4"x4" hoop. I asked if she could make custom designs but to her knowledge there was nothing out there to support it. I had the desire to make a few matching custom patches for some good friends of mine who are into motorcycles.
As everyone knows, you need patches in order to have a proper motorcycle Gang. Looking at some options online I found an extension for Inkscape called Ink/stitch. Checkout their documentation here if you are interested. The learning curve wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. If you'd like to see a handheld explanation of the process from start to finish, look at my Youtube channel for updates! New Video Coming Soon!
Reference artwork made by my sister. I later bitmapped these images and made designs around the bits that I liked!
In the daddy ducky image above, the body didn't look quite right to me, so I bit mapped someone off of the internet who looked similar.
When bitmapping an image. It's important to have a strong contrast between black and white. Grey pencil marks or dots on a page create a lot of unneeded noise.