How To Solve A Problem When The Embroidery Design On Your Finished Garments Do Not Look As Good As Your Design Sew Out!
When your Embroidery design on your finished garments do not look as good as your design sew out, this creates a huge problem. Sometimes it can be solved and sometimes the garments are totally wasted! This is a problem that was created by an embroidery machine operator and it could have been totally avoided. I have always been adamant about making sure that the design sew out was done on the same type of fabric that you are going to be using for your finished garments. This is very important and will pay off in big dividends in both quality of embroidery and time.
As I am working with an embroidery company trying to help reorganized their production and get it up to speed, an issue came up that is very common with many embroiderers, especially new or inexperienced embroiderers.
One of the embroidery machine operators sewed out a design they had received back from the digitizer. She created her sew out to make sure that the design was OK and ready for production. She then embroidered her 6 knit shirts for the customer on an 8 head machine. When she finished them, they were way off registration and it caused the material in the shirt to look stretched around the embroidery.
What caused this Design Registration to be so far off?
She called me over to look at the problem and wanted to know why it happened. She also wanted to know what she could have done to avoid this and how to get this issue solved. The shirts were quite expensive and they are totally unacceptable the way that they are.
I was shocked as to how bad it looked when I first saw it. I quizzed her about her process, what fabric she used for the sew out, what thread she used, how did she have it hooped and how her tensions were set. She created her sew out on 2 layers of firm cutaway backing.
Her sew out was NOT done on the right type of fabric; that was her main problem! You always use the same type of fabric, or very similar, that your finished garments are going to be. She also used 2 layers of a heavy cutaway backing, and the hoops were not tight enough. The backing was much too heavy for the shirt or design. She would have been better off with a lighter weight backing such as a 2 oz cutaway or the No Show cutaway backing. The No Show backing is a mesh backing that holds up very well with a lot of stitches and yet it keeps the garment soft and pliable. She was correct in using a topping on the top of the garment.
Now the question is, how do you solve this problem?
First of all, do not remove the garment from the hoop or the topping from the top of the embroidery. Lay the garment face down over a firm surface and use a tool called “Peggy’s Stitch Eraser” and remove the stitching from the backside of the garment. I use a large candle jar, one with a smooth bottom, turned upside down. You must be very careful that you do not cut any holes into the fabric.
After you have removed all the stitching and thoroughly cleaned up all of the threads, it is time to embroider the design again. This time you must increase the size of your design by 2 or 3 percent. This will be large enough to cover everything that you removed. You must make sure that you do not loosen the hoop as you are removing the stitches. This is very important. If you do, you will need to tighten the hooped area before you begin sewing out the design, and it makes it more difficult to line it up.
Repair your Embroidery on a Single Head Embroidery Machine!
You already have it hooped so you are not going to re-hoop your garment to add new backing. Load the hooped garment back into the machine and lay new backing down under the hoop. For this you will need to use 1 head only because you are not going to be able to line up all 6 shirts to sew out perfectly on the multi-head machine when you are repairing a design like this.
Print out a new design sheet of the larger sized design, cut it out following around the edge of the design and lay it inside the hoop covering the entire area that had the embroidery removed. Make sure that you have the center starting point of the design marked on the design print. Line up the needle with the center starting point. Remove the cut out print, lay down a piece of topping and tape it into place. Now you are ready to re-embroider the design.
This repair method did solve the problem with this order but this embroidery machine operator will make sure that she uses the correct fabric for her sew out the next time and will also use the correct backing. This is a problem that could have been totally avoided if she had been instructed properly!
Why Is It Important To Use Water Soluble Topping?
Water Soluble Topping is a very important element in creating quality embroidery designs and can be used as a remedy when you have designs that do not turn out with the quality look that you are expecting.
Using a water soluble topping when you are embroidering on any type of fabric that has a raised or rough texture will make your embroidery look smoother and help to climb over those rough spots. Topping will help to keep the thread on top of the garment instead of letting it sink into the fabric.
I have always used topping on my knit fabrics, especially the pique knits. I always want high quality embroidery and this will help to give you that look. If you will do an experiment and embroider 2 samples, the same design on the same fabric, one using a topping and one without the topping, I am sure that you will see a noticeable difference.
Some digitizers know how to digitize to eliminate this issue, but the vast majority of digitizers have no idea as to how to solve this problem with their digitizing. The best way to get around it is to use a topping. Some people claim that if you use the topping and wash your garment, the topping is removed and so are the benefits of using it. I have never found this to be true. Sometimes it is necessary to use two layers instead of one if a design is badly digitized, but for the most part, one layer works just fine.
Use Topping To Help Small Text Embroider Smoothly On Top Of Fill Stitches
When you have a design that has small text on top of fill stitches and the stitches from the text want to sink into the fill stitches because it has a rough texture, laying down a piece of topping over the fill area before you embroider the text will solve this issue and give you a smooth edge on your text. This rough textured fill can sometimes be eliminated by shortening the stitch length giving it a smoother texture, but if you are not a digitizer, this is out of your realm of being able to solve that issue, but the topping trick will work and take care of it for you.
I had a design that has been digitized for a woven fabric such as light denim and my customer wanted me to use the same design on a canvas bag. It looked horrible. It was extremely rough looking and it was a stitch file that he had provided me and the customer did not want it edited in any way. I did not want an item going out of my shop looking terrible so I laid the topping on the bag before I embroidered it and it looked great! My customer was very excited when he saw the finished product.
Topping Protects Your Fabric On Dress Shirts!
I always use topping on dress shirts also. I do this not because of the fabric, I do this to protect the fabric. If I have a monogram to embroider on a white shirt, you can be sure that dirt or oil from the machine will magically get on the white shirt! With the topping on it, it protects it and the oil cannot penetrate the topping!
Topping can also be used as a backing when you are embroidering on delicate light weight fabrics that you do not want to see a backing on after it is finished. I have embroidered the bottom of wedding gowns using topping as the backing and they came out great! I was able to remove the topping and the white embroidered design on these white chiffon skirts was beautiful!
I also use the topping as a backing when I embroider blankets. I do not want to see backing after the job is finished on the back of my blankets, throws, shawls or scarfs. It is also good for lubricating the needle when you have a fabric that wants to skip stitches.
If you are one that does not use topping or have not used it very much, get acquainted with it and I think that you will discover just like I did that you can use it to solve many problems and issues along the way. It took me a long time to use it as a first resort instead of a last resort when I was faced with an issue that I did not know how to solve when I wanted the highest quality embroidery possible!
Embroidery Tip- Quoting Designs While Your Customer Waits!
This embroidery tip is all about quoting a design for your customer while they wait? Do you ever have a customer that brings in designs that they want you to reproduce? Of course you do. Do they want a price while they wait? Sure they do. Have you ever wondered how to quote a price without having to go to your digitizer to find out how many stitches there would be in that design?
I have come up with a system that is fairly simple and works great for me and has worked for the past 20 years. I started creating my system by typing in letters at different sizes into my digitizing system to find out what the stitch count would be. Of course each style is a little bit different but for the most part it worked. I averaged out the different letters and here is my result.
- 1/4″ letter = 150 stitches
- 1/2″ letter = 200 stitches
- 3/4″ letter = 350 stitches
- 1″ letter = 500 stitches
- 1 1/4″ letter = 600 stitches
These are the sizes that I have always used the most. If you will add up all of the letters in the design by the size and multiply then by the number of stitches you will have the stitch count for the lettering.
To figure the other areas in a design, there are approximately 1600 fill stitches in a square inch. These of course vary with the pattern and length of your stitch, but this is an average.
Satin borders are approximately 175 stitches per inch. This again is an average, it depends on the density of your stitch. You must also remember to add a little extra for underlay stitching but this will at least give you a starting point and it will make it much easier to look at a design and give a quick quote while the customer waits!
Do you have a method that you have used that has worked great for you? I would love to hear about it!
Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach
Tips For High Quality Embroidery Designs On Caps
“I’m new to Embroidery and I am really having trouble trying to make the Embroidery Designs sew out well on caps. Can you help me?”
Trying to get high quality embroidery designs on caps can be a real challenge when you are new to embroidery but with a little practice and experimenting you can overcome those challenges.
- For best results always start your design from the bottom up and from the center out to achieve the high quality embroidery design on caps that you are looking for.
- To make sure that it stays in registration always finish one section of the design before going onto the next.
- Your logo for a standard cap should not be more than 2.10 inches High and if you are working on a low profile cap it usually cannot be more than 2 inches high. I try to stay within the 2 inch high category for all of my cap designs. Very often your customer will want a repeat order, but they may decide to change the style of cap for the new order. If the original design does not fit on the new cap, you may have issues when the customer wants the design to be the exact same size.
Sometimes 2 inches is too high for a design if you have more than 1 line of straight lettering or if you have a design that has a long line of small straight lettering on the bottom. This can be a real problem. Your bottom line of lettering may pull up in the center of the cap.
- Make sure that the bottom of the design is at least one half of an inch up from the seam where the cap front and the brim are sewn together. If you are working on a stiff cap front your letters may distort if you are too close to the bottom. A lot of this depends on how the cap is made and how stiff it is at the very bottom of the front where it attaches to the brim. When you are hooping your cap, you must make sure that your cap facing is really tight into the lip of the cap framing device.
If this does not work you have to either shorten your design to compensate and distort your lettering the opposite direction. Sometime just shortening the height of the design and moving it up slightly on the cap front will take care of the problem.
- If you are using an embroidery design for a cap that has been created for a left chest, it is not always possible without editing the design to make it embroider properly on the cap. If you have lettering on the bottom of the cap you will have better results if you edit your design so that this lettering will stitch out first. I have found that this works the best. Make sure that your lettering is set up to stitch center out. If your lettering is not stitching center out, you will need to re-sequence the lettering.
- Always use cap backing when you are hooping your caps, regardless of how heavy or stiff your cap is. This also will help to produce a higher quality embroidery design on your caps.
Find out more about embroidery on caps during our embroidery webinar of the month.
“The Embroidery Coach, Joyce Jagger simplifies the complex world of embroidery into easy to understand lessons. Her passion is to help get the new embroiderer off to a fast start and help the existing embroiderer improve their skills so that they can provide higher quality embroidery and increase their profitability! Get her FREE Mini-Course “The 5 Mistakes Embroiderers Make” at www.TheEmbroideryCoach.com”
“How To Work With Customers That Request Custom Embroidery Thread Colors!”
Working with customers that request custom embroidery thread colors is an issue that you must be prepared for but does not occur on an everyday basis. When a customer is requesting an embroidery thread color that you do not have in stock, show him a Pantone Color Chart. Never show him the thread color chart. When he or she makes their selection, compare it to the closest color that you do have in stock and see if he or she will settle for that color choice. Bring out your cone of embroidery thread and compare it to the Pantone color chart.
Many times when the customer first looks at the color chart, they are sure that you do not have their color. Some customers want to be treated special and want custom colors no matter what you have in stock.
If they are not happy with your selection, offer to order their custom color but make sure that they understand that their will in fact be an additional charge for this service. You will need to charge for the thread as well as the shipping in to you.
Many embroiderers order the thread that their customers want and end up spending their entire profit for the job or more just because they do not have that particular color in stock. The thread then sits on the shelf and very often rots because no one else is going to use that particular color.
The average embroiderer carries about 30 embroidery thread colors in stock at all times. I always found that this was an ample selection and 95% of your customers will be totally happy with this selection. Many embroiderers order the entire thread collection in the small cones for display and the convenience for their customer. Do not do this. It is totally unnecessary, a waste of your money and it only causes confusion for the customer with so many choices.
What if the customer wants to take his embroidery thread with him?
If the customer wants to take his embroidery thread with him because he paid for it, let him. Personally, I have never had a customer ask me for their thread and I have had to order customer colors many times. The customer always pays!
Do not get caught in that embroidery thread inventory trap!
Please leave a comment and let me know how you handle a customer that requests custom embroidery thread colors.
Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach
© 2011 Joyce Jagger, The Embroidery Coach
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“The Embroidery Coach, Joyce Jagger simplifies the complex world of embroidery into easy to understand lessons. Her passion is to help get the new embroiderer off to a fast start and help the existing embroiderer improve their skills so that they can provide higher quality embroidery and increase their profitability! Get her FREE Mini-Course “The 5 Mistakes Embroiderers Make” at www.TheEmbroideryCoach.com”
