Embroidery digitizing is a process of digitizing the designs into a machine recognizable form. There are many techniques to stitch a design with digitizing machines. Implementing several techniques in stitching process will benefit both novice and skilled designers. There are machine specific techniques which can be implemented with certain machines but there are other techniques which can be implemented on all types of machines. Pre installed free embroidery designs in machines can be paired with other designs to create new designs.
When incorporating some stitches you may face few challenges. For example, small stitches will disappear into the fabric textile. Fabric will absorb minute stitches. So it is a challenge to stitch embroidery designs on fabrics like wool or corduroy. You can face the challenge by making adjustments while setting up the design. Adjustments in pull compensation, density and correct scale selection can be made to make good designs which can be readable and small letters in different fonts. Using thin threads like 50 weight threads will prevent thread breakage problems while stitching small letters.
Type of thread and weight of the thread will play an important part in embroidery digitizing. All types of embroidery designs depend on these two factors. The quality of thread like sheen quality or commonly called as reflective quality will help to add depth and dimension to the designs. The reflective quality adds character to any embroidery design. We should be careful in matching the actual thread colors to a computerized chart of colors. Often skilled embroidery designers find it difficult to work with colors. Matching thread colors follows procedures like: Installing the thread comparison chart and locating the thread color name on the installed chart to find a thread color number. This is an extra step in digitizing process but this step will make sure your color matching job is successful.
Stitches often sink into fabrics while digitizing on textiles. This is a common problem and can be avoided with some techniques like controlling the length of stitches underlying. This can be done by using parameters feature tool located in the program. Selecting a zigzag stitch will also prevent the problem of sinking stitches. Stitches also shorten half a millimeter, so you need to adjust the parameter from 1.0 millimeters to 1.5 millimeters to get desired design on the fabric.
Certain machines will not stitch the design as you expected. The machines using the hooping process will frustrate you often. So you need to replace this process with floating process to avoid problems. To use the floating process you need to stabilize the fabric with two stabilizer sheets. The set up follows sticking up a sheet on back side of fabric and setting up another sheet on top of the first stabilizer. Then set the fabric on the machine using only the top hoop frame as the design guide.
All these techniques will help you to solve problems involved in the embroidery digitizing which often makes your design a disaster.