Apparel-Decorator’s Troubleshooting Guide: Part 2 Embroidery Project

I firmly believe that the backing you use should match the garment on which you will be using it. Having one cutaway and one tearaway is a good place to start, but I think that in the long run, you will find that you may want to purchase some of the many backing products that are available.

A good example of this is the type of backing that you would use on a white polo shirt. Knit fabrics most often need the stability that comes with a cutaway backing, but white knits often show the backing through the shirt, even if the backing is white, creating an unsightly finish. Solutions to this are varied. Some embroiders take painstaking time to cut as close as possible to the design. Others use organza fabric, a very thin woven that will not show through.

Convenience is a factor in the choices you make. For caps, backing comes in rolls that are cut to the correct height. The time saving feature of this type of product makes it worth the investment, particularly if you are paying employees to cut the backing to size. These, too, are available in both cutaway and tearaway.

Backings are available in several weights also. Using a heavy backing on a lightweight garment is unacceptable, in my opinion. In other instances, a heavier backing is necessary for stability, particularly if the stitch count is high. With experience, I think you will find that several weights will serve you better than just one choice.

Communication is the key word here! As a digitizer, I receive many designs via e-mail and fax. There is rarely enough information the first time around.

The most commonly missed direction is the size of the design. Embroiderers send a design for a quote, and forget to tell me whether it’s for a crest, a cap, or a jacketback! Digitizing for each of those locations is a special process, right down to the amount of detail that a design can have to match its size.

Second, in the act of missed details is the type of garment to which the design will be applied. Many digitizing factors are dependent upon this instruction. The type of underlay, the stitch direction, the running order, and the densities are all variables that must be considered for garment type.

I almost always have to call or write a customer to finalize the details, even for a quote. The best advice I can give is to cover all of the bases. Give specific sizes, number of color changes and where they should occur, any changes from the original artwork, and the type of garment. Discuss with your customer problem areas that may occur and solutions and communicate those to your digitizer, too.

Terrycloth is a napped fabric, and like any napped fabric (those are the ones with threads sticking above the woven material,) it needs special treatment in the embroidery process.

If you are using an existing design and don’t want to do too much editing, the best solution is to use a topping that is water-soluble. Placing topping in the hoop, (backing, substrate, topping, in that order,) gives the embroidery thread a smooth surface and helps to keep the nap flat.

Additional density, especially in column designs, helps to cover the nap, too. But the best solution is to lay the nap down first with the use of underlay. A light fill underlay running the opposite direction of the fill will push down the fibers that without it, would poke through the stitching. For columns, a zig-zag underlay works wonders to combat the problem.

The excessive underlay that is required for good embroidery on napped fabrics adds many stitches to the total stitch count. Embroidery prices should reflect the additional time that it takes!

Supposing that all work has been running smoothly to a point, and the thread breaks start occurring all of a sudden, the very first thing I would look to is the needle. I know of companies who routinely go through their machines and replace all the needles after a certain number of sewing hours. Since our embroidery company is small and we operate all single-head machines, we don’t do that. We change the needles if they start to give us a problem.

Our training manuals advise us to change needles every forty sewing hours. That would be once a work week, providing the work week consists of an eight hour day. Well, I would contend that some needles get forty hours of use in a week, while others do not. Needles that are used for more common colors will get far more wear and tear than those that have less used colors. Some projects require the use of only one or two needles. For that reason, they do not show wear all at the same time.

During the workday, it’s best just to keep an eagle eye on the machines as they run. If the embroidery looks great, the tension settings are more than likely good. Poor tension is immediately visible in your work. You will see bubbles in the embroidery thread, or bobbin thread pulling through to the top if the tension becomes maladjusted.

One of the things to watch out for, especially when embroidering caps, is a build-up of lint in the tension arm of the bobbin. This needs to be cleaned periodically. There is no specific time frame for this job, because different substrates produce differing amounts of lint. Lint under the arm will become immediately visible by the showing of bobbin thread on the top side of the embroidery. The lint loosens the tension as it builds up and spreads the arm away from the bobbin.