Embroidery 101 - Everything To Know

Embroidery - Commonly defined as "thread art" to embellish clothes, hats or products by adding a sewn-in pattern or design, this art takes it roots from long before the machine used today ever existed. 

Thread - With many different sizes and types of threads, we can really customize the look, feel and finished appearance of any design. Embroidery threads are most often made from rayon, cotton, metallics or polyester, which all have different feels and looks. Spun polyester and spun cotton threads have a matter or low sheen look, whereas rayon and polyester filament threads shine more. Metallics threads have the highest luster out of these but do not sew as well as other types of threads. As for sizes, the most common one is a No. 40, but many sizes are available depending on the design, like for example the 3004 for serging appliqués.

Frame - A frame refers to the holding device to we use to secure and stabilize the fabric during the sewing process through clamps, vacuum devices, magnet or springs. 

Appliqué - This techniques works by using the decoration or trimming cute from one fabric embroidered to another, usually using a satin stitch. It's mostly used to add dimension and texture to a design, and can greatly reduce the stitch count of a fabric if covers up a lot of its surface.

Design Library/Catalog - At Custom Embroidery Company, we use a computer program to catalog our collection of digitized designs made previously, so we can show you sample of our previous work depending on the subject, stitch count, icon or number of colours you are interested in.

Digitizing - Your design needs to be digitized in order to be embroidered unto fabric. By converting your artwork through our computers, we can transform your design into a series of commands read by an embroidery machine. Every stitch made by the machine is commanded by the digitized program from the thread changes to the embroidery technique. 

Editing - When digitizing your design, some aspect of it may be too complex for a machine to read, so we can ask you and help you to edit your design slightly to make it feasible on fabric. Through our editing program you can scale your design up or down, edit stitches precisely and even add lettering to the design and move things around.

Lettering - When we embroider letters or words to your design or logo, it is called "lettering" through the computer program of our machines. 

Automatic Color Change - With any given logo or design, we often need to use multiple colour threads. With a multi-needle embroidery machine, we can program specified needles to work with a different color thread. This enables us to work with 10 different thread colours at the same time without stopping and changing threads in the machine, greatly reducing the amount of time needed to embroider a design. 

Embroidery Point - This refers to the unit of measurement used in the embroidery business. 10 embroidery points equals to 1 mm and 1 point equals to 0.1 mm. 

Finishing - When the embroidery is complete, we add the finishing touches to your product to ensure a satisfactory, high-quality finish to your design. These touches includes cutting or tearing away the excess backing, trimming loose threads, removing toppings, cleaning stains, and pressing or steaming the fabric to remove wrinkles or hoop marks, and finally packing your order for sale and shipment.