Machine embroidery

Even if you don’t digitize your own embroidery designs it is helpful to understand the way an embroidery design is put together and how this interacts with your fabric.  Today I am going to  talk about the humble stitch.

Think of your embroidery machine as a bit like a navman.  in order to make a trip you must have a starting point and a destination. To form a stitch you must also have two coordinates, so you have the starting point and the destination, this is one stitch. The stitch also has distances, or rather a stitch length. The next stitch starts at the previous destination point and continues to the next one.wha  This means is; that if you think of your stitches going in between the warp and the weft of the fabric, the stitch should not be overly short or it may result in excessive stitching into a small area. This can result in threads or needles breaking or what can be referred to as “bullet proof” embroidery.

There are of course times when it is necessary to use short stitches but generally speaking they should be no shorter than 1mm or.04 of an inch. Short stitches are necessary for small detail and to give the impression of a curved line. Overly long stitches can also be problematic in that they can cause looping and they can snag. A longer stitch will give more shine to the design. A good digitizer will use a verity of stitch lengths in a design. This will give the design more texture and make it more interesting. 

Stitch density is another important consideration; the density refers to the coverage space between two rows of stitches. The denser a design is the better the coverage; however it always ideal to have maximum density and this is something to consider when you are selecting a design for a particular fabric. The more dense the embroidery pattern the less supple it will be (again “bullet proof” embroidery). The other thing to consider is that a more the design willresult in a higher the stitch count, which means it, will take longer to stitch out and use more thread.

If you have any questions about embroidery please visit our embroidery forum



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