Why Is It Important To Use Water Soluble Topping?

January 12th, 2012 Posted in Embroidery Tip

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!

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