# Embroidery beginner's problems



## Grzeniu (Nov 10, 2015)

Hello there,

We've purchased an embroidery machine together with Stitch Era digitizing software in our company. Until now we were sending our projects to external embroidery company, thus we have no real experience in the topic. There's a lot to learn, both when it comes to digitizing and embroidering itself and I'd like to ask you a few questions regarding these topics. 

First of all, where could I read about stitch density? Till now, we've tried using from 4 to 6 per mm, and in most cases it does not look good - either it's too dense (especially thin lines seem to be too densely stiched, or, as below, bigger areas get too transparent). 

One example below, the base fabric is thicker material, some kind of sweater. There are two main problems: red is visible through the embroidery and the non-horizontal black edges are jagged. Is it because of density being too low, wrong pattern used or should we try with thread tension? The image was auto-digitized, then the patterns got modified and enlarged so that they would overlap/trap each other. Do not look at the lower black text, it is total mess.










I will probably come with more problems after I have read and learnt more. At the moment I am looking through the forums, internet, reading the Stitch Era's manual and hopefully will get more knowledge it the topic. For now, thanks for any, even basic, tips on the issues above!

My regards!


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## digidana (Jun 20, 2016)

usually people learn the embroidery end of things first. it helps a lot to watch the machine stitch designs that have been digitized correctly for a while. there are several problems with the design. its not just a density issue....but in regards to density, about every software has a different unit of measurement so i can't tell you exactly what your density should be set at for a fill in that software...you will most likely have to learn that from trial and error and error and error. i would recommend doing several small 1" blocks of fill with different density settings and stitch them all out and see which gives you the coverage you're looking for. once you find a fill density you like, that doesn't mean it will work for all stitching. satin densities will be different...and different for every width of satin. if you use the same density for a 1.3 mm wide satin stitch that you do for a 3 mm wide satin stitch, you will get thread breaks and birds nests. the smaller the satin stitch, the less density you need.

looking at the design, you also have a very strange span and offset. i'm not sure what your software calls it, but do you see how it is stitching the fill into stripes? it should be laying nice and smooth. either that, or you're using a satin stitch in your filled areas. it also looks like there may not be any underlay?

there is a LOT to learn with digitizing. once you figure out the densities, there is also what stitch direction to use, pathing, outlining and offsets, what underlay to use when, and then when you think you have it figured out, everything is different for caps.

also, with auto digitizing, you will never get a great design. there is a thought process and "know how" that goes into digitizing that the software will never be able to duplicate. 

since you're just starting out, if you want your embroidery to look great (and not eat garments!), you should send your designs out for digitizing. it will save you a lot of headaches. get them back from the digitizer, watch them stitch, and learn from them. you may find that you don't want to get into digitizing at all. i've had some customers for 20 years that only want to do the embroidery end of things and i do all of their digitizing. on the other hand, you may discover that digitizing is the part that you enjoy the most! most embroidery shops don't have the time to do both. your end customer should expect a "set up", or digitizing fee for their first order. its pretty standard.

if you'd like to email me over the artwork and the design, i'd be happy to take a look at it to see if i can give you any other pointers. [email protected]


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## SunEmbroidery (Oct 18, 2007)

Does your software have default settings for different materials? If so these setting can you a better starting point for your designs. Then you can improve on those settings.


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## AlisonB (Sep 26, 2010)

I do not know your software but it certainly looks as if no underlay has been put down. Unfortunately auto-digitizing is usually more headache trying to edit than manually digitizing from the beginning. Increasing pull compensation might help, and I think your design would have looked better if a water soluble topping had been used as well.
In my software the default is 0.45, but I find a setting of 0.48 (slightly less dense) for the embroidery with an underlay of 3.0 gives adequate coverage without being bullet-proof.
If you look at You-Tube videos you should look at *all *you can find on digitizing - not only those specific to your software. The basics stay the same and you can learn a *lot. *Search for Bernina software and Wilcom and Embird etc.


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## Grzeniu (Nov 10, 2015)

Thank you a lot for the answer, Dana, it does help a lot!



> i would recommend doing several small 1" blocks of fill with different density settings and stitch them all out and see which gives you the coverage you're looking for


That issue seems to be solvable more easily now. Previously used 5/6/7 stitches/mm seemed to be transparent, now I have used 10s/mm and the area is covered well. We are doing better with the threads' tension, i.e. we change it so that the bobbin thread is 1/3 width of the area away from the sides, like it looks on the third image here - it's not my photo but that's what we try to achieve .http://theembroiderycoach.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Tension-Settings.jpg[/media] The problem now is that the edges still look pretty jagged. The three photos linked below show 100mm-wide embroidery with 10 st/mm. The issue we'd like to solve now is the edge of letters, it is far to edgy. I have also attached files used for that embroidery so that you could check them. Photos mentioned above



> looking at the design, you also have a very strange span and offset. i'm not sure what your software calls it, but do you see how it is stitching the fill into stripes? it should be laying nice and smooth. either that, or you're using a satin stitch in your filled areas.


Yes, I have used "some" pattern, not sure if it's satin, as my software does not call anything satin (sic) - when it comes to areas, I can choose between zigzag stitch and many various patterns. Here's a screenshot on how does it look in the software. By span you mean the distance between stitches of one thread (image - pink, 3.5mm in length) and by offset the distance between parallel stiches (image - violet)?
[media]http://i.imgur.com/4tEdNAD.jpg[/media]



> it also looks like there may not be any underlay?


Do you mean a layer of stitching under the main embroidery or interlining, i.e. the material put into the hoop before the main cloth? We have put adequate amount of the material, in our case 4 layers, in order to make it look alright.


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## digidana (Jun 20, 2016)

when you say 5/6/7 mm stitch, are you talking about the stitch length? typically on a fill stitch, you should use a 4 mm stitch.

correct on the thread tensions...if they aren't right, nothing will stitch well. on the bottom of the satin you should see 1/3 top thread, 1/3 bobbin, then 1/3 top thread again. the third image is correct.

a satin stitch is the same as a column, or zigzag stitch. its what is shown on your tension sewout pic. 

in the graphic above...the overlapping is more of a pull compensation. when you stitch on fabric, it will stretch the fabric a bit and you need to compensate for that by having a little overlap. when i say span and offset...it affects how the actual needle penetrations line up in a fill stitch. let me see if i can make it clear with periods. not sure how this will come across...

. . . . . .
. . . . . .
. . . . . .
. . . . . . .

if those are the actual needle penetrations in your fill stitch, you can see how they would kind of make a diagonal "stripe" in the fill stitch. to get a smoother fill stitch, you would want your penetrations more like this:

. . . . . .
. . . . . .
. . . . . . 
. . . . . 

span is basically the distance between one needle penetration and the next. it works in conjunction with the offset...which is the second line of needle penetrations, and where they fall compared to the previous line of stitching. make sense?

the macha lettering doesn't look bad to me. you will have a big of a saw edge on fabric that is bumpy, especially pique. if you want less, you could tighten your density a bit, or you could put a 2-line underlay under the edges of the lettering.

underlay...it is part of the embroidery design. there are several types. in a fill stitch, it will look like a fill stitch that is much less dense (usually about 3 mm between lines of stitching), that run the opposite direction of the fill. the underlay helps stabilize the fabric. it works as a foundation. in a satin/column/zig zag stitch, depending on the width of the stitch, you will use a single line of stitching that runs underneath (for a narrow satin), a little wider satin, you will use 2 lines of underlay that run under the edges of the satin, for a wider still...you could use a "looser" zig zag, a double loose zig zag, a 2-line edge, or any combination of those.

as far as the "interlining", i think you're talking about backing, correct? you hoop it with the shirt. you should only need one layer of cut-away backing...4 layers is a lot.

email me the design with the bicycle as a dst file, and i can show you what i mean with a lot of these issues. it would make more sense if you could see it stitch.


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## digidana (Jun 20, 2016)

the "periods" meant to show span and offset didn't come across right. it took out the spaces. let me try again:

x-----x-----x-----x-----x
---x-----x-----x-----x-----x
-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x
x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x

ok, the x's are the needle insertions in a fill stitch. that will give you a diagonal/striped look in your fill.

x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x
---x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x
x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x
---x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x

this would give you a smoother looking fill...


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## wrkalot (Mar 2, 2011)

There are some good videos on Stitch Era Liberty here
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY2inAvq0dBq_6Uxg_Myo5-iDOY4JiGom

and here
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY2inAvq0dBqWaarStNszIWKfLg6Il05I


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## Grzeniu (Nov 10, 2015)

My apologies for not having replied for a quite long time. I've been busy and each time we've encountered a problem, I wanted to post here but we managed to cope with most of the issues so far. Anyways, thanks for all the answers, they are helpful a lot!



digidana said:


> when you say 5/6/7 mm stitch, are you talking about the stitch length? typically on a fill stitch, you should use a 4 mm stitch.


Well, we were ucorrectly told by the software's distributor that the SEU's density is stitches per milimeter and I simply did not check it, just took it as it was  Software says it's lines per milimeter with minimum of 0.1 and maximum of 20. We have established that we can do something from 5 to 10 and it looks alright, depending on the image. The image of bike above had something like 4 or 5 l/mm so it was simply too low.



> in the graphic above...the overlapping is more of a pull compensation. when you stitch on fabric, it will stretch the fabric a bit and you need to compensate for that by having a little overlap


Since I come from screen printing, I thought that images should be "trapped" so that they overlap in every axis (not only the stitching direction) but now that you've explained it to me, it makes sense. I have such function in the program, called as you did - pull compensation.



> span is basically the distance between one needle penetration and the next. it works in conjunction with the offset...which is the second line of needle penetrations, and where they fall compared to the previous line of stitching


That did make sense, actually  Yet the graphic explanation is useful as well, even more to those, who come across this thread with similar question.



> [...] you will have a big of a saw edge on fabric that is bumpy, especially pique.[...] you could tighten your density a bit, or you could put a 2-line underlay under the edges of the lettering.


Right, density does the trick most of the time. What do you mean by 2-line underlay? In underlay menu, I can choose from these options, for text, the "centered" option works pretty okay.
http://i.imgur.com/L7ZIoPg.png?1



> underlay...it is part of the embroidery design [...]


Thanks for the wide explanation, will have to read about it more now.



> as far as the "interlining", i think you're talking about backing, correct? you hoop it with the shirt. you should only need one layer of cut-away backing...4 layers is a lot.


Yes, backing, was not sure how to translate it to English. At the moment we only have two types: firstly, a tear-away, transparent one, that is pretty thin and that's why we had used 4 layers. Now, after learning quite a bit, it's okay even if we use one/two of these. Next is a hydrophobic one, dissolving in water (frottes, etc.) and one that a bit thicker and can stick to the material via temperature. We know how to when use them but it seems that we have no backing that is to be cut-away, do you mean the thicker one that is to be used for badges?



> email me the design with the bicycle as a dst file, and i can show you what i mean with a lot of these issues. it would make more sense if you could see it stitch.


There's really no need for you to spend time on this design, but thanks a lot anyway! I will, though, send you the image that's shown below so that you could just look though it and tell me if it's digitized okay, too dense, etc. At the moment it's around 19,5k stitches for a 262x170mm design, is that too large amount?
http://i.imgur.com/y6zh7b3.png?1

From all the issues so far, there's only one left at the moment. We've done some polo tshirts with 8x8cm text embroidered on the left chest and while on most of them it looks okay, in some cases, the material around the far-right letter (i.e. that is closest to the middle of the tshirt and most far away from the hoop's bar, in this case "M") looks a bit wavy, as if the embroidery was too dense and the tshirt's material got tightened by the thread. There's a photo below, you may see a shadow casted by the wavy area, that's what I'm talking about. Now: is it caused by the design's density (1900 stitches) or was the tshirt put into the hoop too loosely/tightly? Okay, some of the tshirts were done okay, so it surely has something to do with the hoop but could I do something with density (or the design overall) so that the design will look good no matter how someone attatched the tshirt to the hoop?
[media]http://i.imgur.com/5VkG6d7.jpg[/media]

Thanks again to all of you, a great bunch!


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## StuartAppleby (Nov 15, 2021)

looking forward to seeing this book up close and personal - love the fox on the front cover and really enjoyed Alyssa's interview with Pat Sloan recently.


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## lesliejordan (9 mo ago)

Grzeniu said:


> Hello there,
> 
> We've purchased an embroidery machine together with Stitch Era digitizing software in our company. Until now we were sending our projects to external embroidery company, thus we have no real experience in the topic. There's a lot to learn, both when it comes to digitizing and embroidering itself and I'd like to ask you a few questions regarding these topics.
> 
> ...


Have you tried the Inkstitch extension for Inkscape? If you post your SVG file I can try to output a PDF file for you that looks like what you need


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