Shop Talk Exterior Our ZSK CNC sewing table offers highspeed digital sewing with embedded embroidery with the largest panel size available in the industry at 52 by 54 inches. Quilt stitching can be found in products on the inside and outside of boats. Thread creativity An important element to your quilt design can be the thread portion of the job. With this type of quilt stitching, the thread is exposed at the surface of the panel. The size and color of the thread can contribute to the fi nal look of your fi nished product. Using complementary or contrasting thread to the color of the fabric allows you to achieve different design effects in your fi nished products. As we have seen in the automotive industry, thread size can even play a part in the fi nished look. Everyone has seen sports cars with seats topstitched in bright fl uorescent-colored large-diameter threads. Your equipment limitations may or may not let you vary the thread size, but remember that automotive trends typically show up in the marine industry, so be prepared for this element when considering future equipment needs. Equipment and talent upgrades Canvas Designers has invested in equipment over time to align with the demands of the market when it comes to quilt stitching. We quickly realized that the throat limitation on our sewing machine made it very diffi cult to do any larger-sized patterns, so we invested in a 30-inch long-arm sewing machine to get more face fabric under the throat of the machine. This helped tremendously for hand quilting and is still used extensively by our sewing staff for some of the basic channel and diamond requirements that are stitched. However, this method is limited and cannot be used in many of the intricate patterns we sew today. The more intricate patterns take extensive sewing talents and a lot of time to complete the tasks using standard machines. Since we were already making custom comforters and bedspreads in our shop, we had a Gammill Statler® stitcher in our facility. Our Gammill was both a manual handguided machine and a computer-driven CNC machine. While it is typically used with lightweight thread to quilt bedding, we were able to get it to sew the larger threads required for quilt stitching and to do a decent job on the basic diamond patterns without a lot of effort. Anticipating market demand As demand for more intricate patterns and designs continued, we upgraded to our ZSK CNC embroidery machine. This is one of the few equipment options on the market that allows us to use both a heavy thread for the quilt stitching and a small thread for the embedded embroidery capability we were looking to add. Our machine is a 12-thread machine with six large threads and six embroidery threads that can be used simultaneously to create a design. This machine allows us to quilt 38 Marine Fabricator | July/August 2021