Impressions - June/July 2013 - (Page 46)

tS Embroidery Design & Digitizing If you create a circle with the light density ﬁll, your stitches will start at the top, go horizontally and ﬁnish at the bottom. Then, if you take a running stitch and outline the circle, you will see that there is no distortion when you stitch out the design. The ﬁll will line up with that running stitch outline. the garment, be subtle and pliable, and look like it is part of the garment. Ideally, we must add detail or stitches on top of the ﬁll patterns without interference from the underlying stitches. The ﬁnished design should work on all fabrics without making drastic changes, and scale up and down easily. It should run well with no thread breaks, and it should have just enough stitches to cover the material and give it the true and consistent color that is prescribed. Our background ﬁlls (or tatamis) should be just that — backgrounds. They should work as a platform to show off and enhance the important detail. You should be able to lay the background stitches down in such a way that anything may be placed on top with no interference. To do all of this, we cannot use the standard pull compensation formulas. We need to address the direction, density and length of the stitches, as well as underlay. When you try to control your machine through compensating, the heavy stitches applied to your material ﬁght for room on the garment. Instead of correcting the problem, they are, in fact, causing it. However, if you place a light density ﬁll on the garment as an underlay, it will not pull in, nor will it push out. If you add a second layer, it also will not pull in. A third layer, again, will not add to the stitches in such a way as to distort your image and will not pull in. So if you layer your ﬁlls instead of putting all of the stitches down at once, you will ﬁnd that there is no pulling, pushing or distortion, yet you still will have full coverage. 46 Impressions | June/July 2013 BUILDING THE LAYERS To build layers, we will start with a 1⁄3 density ﬁll, the same ﬁll that we used for our blending and shading techniques (see March and April/May 2013 issues of Impressions). Start by creating a square inch of ﬁll. Make sure no underlay is present. With a stitch length of about 3.5 or .35, depending on your software, and the density at default, my computer tells me 1 square inch contains 939 stitches. One-third of that density is about 300 stitches per inch. The perfect design should move with the garment, be subtle and pliable, and look like it is part of the garment. Check the density setting on your computer when you reach 1⁄3 of the stitches. This is the density you will use when layering objects in your design. That 33% density is not much heavier than an underlay. And, as we found with the blending technique, by running the layers in the same direction (the same angle) they will blend together and your stitches will not ﬁght for room. Because you cannot physically put a stitch on top of another stitch, the needle ﬁnds the void in the underlying layer and places the new stitch in the open area. As you add each layer of your ﬁll, the stitches will be placed by the embroidery machine in such a way that they fall naturally in place. Thus, you will not be ﬁghting the machine; instead, you will be working with it. Create a circle with this light density ﬁll. Your stitches will start at the top, go horizontally and ﬁnish at the bottom. If you then take a running stitch and outline the circle, you will see that there is no distortion when you stitch out the design. The ﬁll will line up with that running stitch outline. Using the original circle, create a second circle of the ﬁll pattern by duplicating the ﬁrst layer of ﬁll. Add an edge-walk underlay or a running stitch outline under the second layer, and stitch that on top of the ﬁrst layer. There still will be no pull, pushing or distortion. As this second layer is an exact duplication of the ﬁrst, move your start point to the bottom where you ﬁnished your ﬁrst layer, then move your stop to the top. After putting down two layers that add up to a little more than 65% density on your garment, you may add a ﬁnal layer by duplicating that ﬁrst layer again and adding it on top of the ﬁrst two layers. Now, with three layers and 100% coverage, you have a perfect circle. It is one that looks like a circle on your screen, and one that will stitch out as a circle on your machine. impressionsmag.com http://www.impressionsmag.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Impressions - June/July 2013

Impressions - June/July 2013
Contents
First Impressions
From the Show Director
FYI
Product Gallery
ISS Conferences
Outfitting Tots & Teens
Is the Price Right?
Heat Printing for Friday Nights
Shop Spotlight
Embroidery Design & Digitizing
Online Directory
Embroidery Production
Screen Printing Production
Screen Printing Technique
Tech Tips
Classifieds
Ad Index

Impressions - June/July 2013