Troubleshooting Design Problems: Improper Digitizing Embroidery Project

Digitizing problems can be broken down into the following categories: incorrect setup for the given garment, improper manipulation of the design parameters, and applying the design to a different fabric than the one it was digitized for.

Typically, an incorrect setup means that the digitizer either didn’t know what they were doing or didn’t pay attention to the job details. The most significant factor of the digitizing process is push-pull compensation. That begins with an understanding of the characteristics of the fabric that the design will be sewn on. Some fabrics are more stable than others. For the unstable ones, certain elements must be added to the design to ensure that quality and registration are maintained at the highest levels. Inexperienced digitizers may not have a thorough understanding of the push-pull phenomenon, and thus may not have predicted and compensated for it, which is a leading cause of poor registration.

In some cases, the embroiderer takes a well-digitized design and then tries to resize it or change some of the parameters to suit their own needs. By altering the original design, the very features that ensure top quality sewing, are changed and the quality level decreases.

Finally, sewing a design on a different garment/fabric than the one for which it was digitized can cause all kinds of quality issues. Like it or not, no design sews great on everything. Since each fabric has different characteristics, a design needs to be digitized differently for each one. But in the real world, no one wants to pay to have several versions created. Instead they take the design and apply it to every fabric and hope that it works. When it doesn’t, they assume the digitizing is flawed.

The same thing happens with stock designs. You buy something off the internet and find that it sews great on denim shirts, but when you try to sew it on a t-shirt, the outlines don’t line up. Once again the digitizer is to blame. In reality, the embroiderer is the one to blame for assuming a given design works well on every fabric. It doesn’t.