On Design: Mighty Shot
With this month’s On Design, we travel deep into the jungles of Central Mexico, harkening back to an ancient time where the Aztecs roamed the earth whilst building a formidable empire.
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Embroidery: Design + Digitizing
On Design: Surf’s Up
With summer right around the corner, this month’s featured design brings some heat, surf and fun in the sun.
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On Design: Animal Kingdom
“Paws” was created by Quality Punch, a Torrance, California-based embroidery-digitizing and vector-art supplier.
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Digitizing for Thin Fabrics
Embroidering on fashionable fabrics — especially the thin varieties, such as tri-blends — is a little less forgiving than when it’s done on heavier fabrics.
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Tips for Digitizing on Thin Fabrics
Embroidering on thin fabrics such as performancewear and tri-blend garments can scare away some embroiderers.
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Digitizing Lettering for Caps
As an embroiderer, you must consider many aspects when it comes to lettering on headwear. From 3-D puff to outlined text, the game changes when embroidery is done on a cap.
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Digitizing and Embroidering Difficult Fabrics
While you may have mastered twills and tees, other fabrics on the other hand, may still present a challenge. We are going to focus on digitizing and embroidering on the more difficult types of fabric.
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Scaling Stock Monograms
In embroidery, there is nothing more beautiful than a monogram. In fact, because of its luxury, a monogram on a man’s shirt cuff became a symbol of hope during the Great Depression. And, at a time of economic disaster, this small luxury kept our industry alive.
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Spooktacular Stitches
Impressions gives apparel decorators from around the world the opportunity to submit their most impressive work, compete alongside their peers and show off their talents to the industry in its annual Impressions Awards decorating competition.
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Embroidery Digitizing File Types, Formats and Software
There are two kinds of file types for digitizing an embroidery design for apparel decoration: outline (or parent) files and expanded (or machine) files. Outline files are specific to a software. Expanded files are more generic and can be read by embroidery machines.
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Sheer Impact
Each year, Impressions invites decorators from around the world to enter their most impressive work, compete alongside their peers and show off their talents to the industry in the Impressions Awards decorating competition.
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Easy Embroidery Alignment
Let’s say you just finished an embroidery job — a left-chest logo stitched on shirts and hats — and now the customer wants jackets. What’s more, he wants the same logo on a jacket back.
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Design Manipulation for Embroidery
Understanding what to do before a design goes to the digitizer
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Working with the Limitations of Lids
Whether you are a digitizer, shop owner or salesman, it is good to know the basics of embroidering on caps
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Font Secrets
As most embroiderers inevitably discover, some customers expect you to
take a symbol they have chosen, add lettering and create a logo. This
leads to a certain amount of freedom to choose the ideal font.
Hat Tricks
Experienced embroiderers know when a design will result in a quality sewout, and their customers will be happy with the results. But embroidering on headwear presents a special set of challenges, which leads many embroiderers to avoid these projects.
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Digitizing the Details
Of all the positive business decisions you make daily, mastering the ability to provide amazing detail, infinitesimal lettering and artistic shading should be among them.
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Embroidery Hits the Silver Screen
When you think of the many apparel options that are available for embellishment, a traditional Japanese kimono probably doesn’t immediately come to mind.
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Is it Time to Digitize In-House?
Follow these steps to pick the best software for your embroidery business
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Laser Tag
One of the most untapped technologies in the decorated apparel industry is the embroidery laser.
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Special-Effects Thread Options
As embroiderers, we experiment with all kinds of materials to create special effects. From 3-D embroidery foam to appliqué and Mylar-enhanced creations, we go all out to add glamour and interest to our embroidery.
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Everything You Should Know About Nodes
A node is a designer’s best friend in many programs. Many embroidery software programs also use nodes to create and define aspects of a shape.
How to Digitize Small Lettering
In embroidery, no detail is more important than lettering. Your designs are labels for your customers and they must be able to read those labels — even the small print.
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In the Details
This year marked the 35th annual Impressions Awards, and it represents our showcase of the industry’s best designs from decorators of all sizes and experience levels.
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Understanding Alphabet and Font Options
By choosing one of these four ways to create data for stitching lettering, it’s possible to strike a balance between style and substance.
How to Work With Push-Pull Compensation
There are two great mysteries that digitizers must solve to build the perfect design: underlay and push-pull compensation.
How to Achieve Shading in Embroidery
Although the terms “blending” and “shading” often are interchanged, there is a difference. You can blend colors without shading, but you cannot shade an object without blending colors.
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The Art of Successful Color Blending
To successfully blend colors, you must know how to mix colors.
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