With summer right around the corner, this month’s featured design brings some heat, surf and fun in the sun. Created by Torrance, California-based Quality Punch, “Tiki Bear” is a combination patch featuring six chenille colors and eight regular thread colors with a 165,000-stitch count.
“The biggest challenge in making such a design is selecting which part would be chenille and which would be regular thread,” says Ria Habib, co-owner, Quality Punch. “The bigger parts are easy to do chenille; it’s the smaller parts that are challenging. Most of the bear is chenille, but the surfboard and the little characters are highlighted with part chenille. The correct combo of chenille and thread gives the design the ‘oomph’ it needs.”
Chenille is temperamental and can be non-forgiving. It must be punched perfectly on the machine to avoid causing multiple thread jams, according to Habib.
“Once a piece is done, chenille can snag and unravel, or it may look inconsistent in terms of the fluff,” Habib says. “This past year, we did a lot of research on chenille and that has helped us tremendously in adding great value in our customers’ designs.”
To achieve the various textures and seamless transitions between each thread color, Habib used contrasting threads for the special look. “The larger area of the bear is chenille; the belly has a different shade of yellow. The garland looks very nice because the pink is chenille and the white is regular thread. The red areas [of the surfboard] are in chenille. This variation gives a look of multimedia [even] though it’s all thread.”
Design Details
Dimensions: 16″ x 11″
Embroidery Machine: Tajima
Software: Wilcom
Thread Type(s): Madeira
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