Embroidery is one of the most appealing ways to bring your logo to life on apparel items, hats and caps, bags, blankets and more.  Our embroidery division, makes personalization quick and easy, while delivering the highest quality products every time.  Read on to learn more about how the embroidery process works.

The Computerized Machine Embroidery Process

These are the basic steps for creating embroidery with a computerized embroidery machine:

• Purchase or create a digitized embroidery design file (one time fee)
• Edit the design and/or combine with other designs (optional)
• Load the final design file into the embroidery machine
• Stabilize the fabric and place it in the machine
• Start and monitor the embroidery machine

Design Files

Digitized embroidery design files can be either purchased or created. A person who creates a design is known as an “embroidery digitizer” or “puncher”. The digitizer, or puncher, uses special digitizing software to create their embroidery design.

The digitizer creates the design in the native file format for the digitizing software (.EMB for example). These are ‘Object Based’ design and allow the digitizer to easily reshape and edit the design later.

The native file formats retain important information such as:

• Object outlines
• Thread colors
• Original artwork used to punch the designs

As a digitizer it is critical to maintain and keep the original digitized design file. Converting the design to a stitch file such as DST, PES and DSB will lose many of the valuable information, and make editing and changing the design very difficult or impossible.

Editing Designs

Once a design has been digitized, it can be edited or combined with other designs by software. With most embroidery software the user can rotate, scale, move, stretch, distort, split, crop, or duplicate the design in an endless pattern. Most software allows the user to add text quickly and easily. Often the colors of the design can be changed, made monochrome, or re-sorted. More sophisticated packages will allow the user to edit, add or remove individual stitches.

Loading the Design

After editing the final design, the design file is loaded into the embroidery machine. Different machines expect different files formats. The commercial format DST (Tajima) is the most popular. Embroidery patterns can be transferred to the computerized embroidery machines in a variety of ways, either through cables, CDs, floppy disks, USB interfaces, or special cards that resemble flash and compact cards.

Stabilizing the Fabric

To prevent wrinkles and other problems, the fabric must be stabilized. The method of stabilizing depends to a large degree on the type of machine, the fabric type, and the design density. There are many methods for stabilizing fabric, but most often one or more additional pieces of material called “stabilizers” or “interfacing” are added beneath and/or on top of the fabric.

For smaller embroidered items, the item to be embroidered is hooped, and the hoop is attached to the machine. There is a mechanism on the machine (usually called an arm) that then moves the hoop under the needle.

For large commercially embroidered items, a bolt of fabric can be worked by a long row of embroidery “heads”, producing a continuous pattern of embroidery. Each embroidery head is a sewing machine with multiple needles for different colors, and is usually capable of producing many special fabric effects including satin-stitch embroidery, chain-stitch embroidery, sequins, appliqué, cutwork, and other effects.

Embroidering the Design

Finally, the embroidery machine is started and monitored. For commercial machines, this process is a lot more automated than for the home embroiderer. For most designs, there is more than one color, and often additional processing for appliqué, foam, and other special effects. In addition, most designs will have a few or many jumps that need to be cut. Depending on the quality and size of the design, stitching out a design file can require a few minutes or an hour or more.

Estimating Stitch Count in Embroidery Designs

Accurately estimating the number of stitches that a design WILL BE is not an easy task. Usually it takes years of experience to develop an eye. However, there are tools and guides to assist in this process. We have included the standard method below. The higher the stitch count the more cost involved.

Use the rules below and a grid similar to the one below to estimate your designs stitch count.
* 1 solid square inch of embroidery equals approximately 2,000 stitches.
* 1 solid square 1/4 inch of embroidery will equal about 125 stitches.
* No letter should be smaller than 3/16″ each letter 1/4″ in height equals about 100 stitches.
* Drop shadows in your logo will translate to 200 extra stitches per inch.
* Straight lines under logos typically require 200 extra stitches per inch.
* Fabrics, colors, and artwork detail will affect the amount of stitches.

It is important to remember that these stitch-count tips, and the stitch-count grid, provide estimates only. They are a good starting point to arrive at a ballpark count, but the precise figure can only be determined when the actual embroidery of your design is performed.