As embroiderers, we get customers of all kinds. Well, at least we do in our shop. In this very small town that I live in, we don’t turn anybody away. Whether the buyer is looking for one Grandma shirt or hundreds of items, we take the order. Consequently, we need to know how to handle all different types of fabrics, or perhaps I should call them substrates, because not all embroidery is on fabric!

For example, in a typical day, we may be required to embellish polo shirts, polar fleece blankets, leather jackets, denim shirts, caps, bags, sweatshirts, Ts…you name it. We even embroidered a wheel cover one time! Just today we had a request to put a name on a gun case.

In other words, substrates of varying weights, thicknesses and stability go under the needle all day long. Some are thick and some are thin!

For the purposes of this article, let’s assume that a restaurant owner has come in and requested twill chef’s coats, polos for waiters and waitresses, six panel caps, t-shirts and various items for the gift shop, including fleece blankets, CD cases and a sport bag, all decorated with the company logo.

A number of considerations are required to achieve the best embroidery on various articles using the same logo. Let’s take a look at digitizing for garment types, editing to make a design work, backing the embroidery and hooping techniques. Assuming that the embroidery machine is in good working order, with proper tensions set, those factors must be conquered to achieve quality embroidery.

Digitizing

As a digitizer, I know full well that the easiest person to blame for substandard embroidery is me. Therefore, I take my job very seriously in terms of creating a design specifically for the fabrics upon which it will be placed.

In this order, we have three distinct categories of substrates. The easiest and least likely to give us problems are the solid fabrics that are in the twill chef’s coat, the CD cases and the bags. My favorite theme here is efficiency. As any other good digitizer would do, I try to achieve the best results with the least amount of stitches. After all, that’s where the money is. A minimal amount of underlay is necessary to secure the fabric to the backing. Because these fabrics are solid, stitches do not sink into them as they would to less stable substrates. I would try to use each thread color only once, walking from one color block to the next, avoiding time-wasting trims whenever possible. The only time I would repeat a color would be if there were apparent layers in the design that couldn’t be achieved any other way.

The second category includes the knits. The stretchy properties of polos, T-shirts, sweatshirts and polar fleece make them unstable surfaces upon which to embroider. Couple that with the fact that many knit fabrics have a nap that is more difficult to cover when the threads sink into them, and you have what many would term a digitizing nightmare! The common misconceptions that adding more density to the design and the end result of having many more stitches can be laid to rest, though. Proper underlay is the key to great embroidery on knits. Because the stitches will certainly sink into the fabric, what we need here is a way to make them stand up above the material. A fill underlay, running the opposite direction of the stitches will prevent the sinking. In the case of polar fleece and other napped fabrics, it may even be necessary to use a secondary underlay in addition to the primary underlay, each running at forty-five degree angles from the stitch direction of the fill. Columns may need an edge walk underlay rather than a center walk, or maybe in addition to the center walk.

Of course, all that underlay will definitely add to the stitch count in the design, but it will never add as many stitches as increasing the density of the fill. Plus, the embroiderer will avoid the unsightly buckling of the fabric that can be caused by too many stitches.

The last category in our diverse order is the caps. Headwear is a different breed of cat when it comes to digitizing. I’ve devoted whole articles to this subject, but space does not permit that extensive a review here. Let me just say this, efficiency be hanged! Cap designs perform best when they are digitized from the center out and from the bottom to the top. Why? Though caps are usually constructed from stable fabrics, most are flimsy and hard to hoop. The most stable part of the cap is near the seam that secures the crown to the bill, followed by the area of the center seam. Working up and out from those two stable portions pushes the fabric the same distance with each pass of the embroidery machine, allowing for better registration in the design.