Impressions - February 2014 - 65

up the Rotate option) and then adjust the
rotation. This will rotate the other pieces of
the blend so they look appropriate. Once
all of these options are ﬁnalized, you can
go up to Blend Options and click the up
arrow on the number of steps in the blend
until the stitches merge together. You can
then add a couple of inside contours and
then apply a dotted line to simulate a running stitch (see Figures 4 and 4a).
To achieve this same look with a zigzag stitch, simply substitute a "V" shape
that is created with lines to replace the X
in the cross-stitch version.

FILLED-IN EMBROIDERY
There are situations where there is no
time to create a perfect look. Say your customer will be arriving at your shop in 20
minutes. You need something to show him
that simulates an embroidered look, but you
can't spend time on a re-creation or embellished look where all of the stitches are
visible. In these cases, it can be effective to

simulate it by doing a powerclip ﬁll on the
object with an embroidered background.
To do a powerclip of an embroidered
background, you need an embroidered
texture ﬁll that you can then place inside
of the image elements and change the
color as needed. Save this texture ﬁle as
a prep ﬁle so you can shortcut the process
even more later if you need to repeat this
step. Once you have your texture ﬁle, you
can then duplicate it as needed and group
them together, then powerclip them inside of the elements that need this look
(see Figure 5). The ﬁnal thing needed to
polish the look is to add a drop shadow
onto the border and back of the design.
Done correctly, this method only takes
about two minutes. The look isn't perfect,
but it can get the design comped quickly
in a crunch.

ACCURATE DETAIL
A ﬁnal approach to creating a very
accurate and detailed embroidered look

with a vector design is to use third-party
software. Several programs will accomplish this task; for this article, I used the
DRAWings embroidery effect.
With this software, the design had to
be slightly prepped to simplify different
elements, and then the original ﬁle was
exported as an Adobe Illustrator 8.0 ﬁle
to work properly. The result had a decent
look similar to real embroidery and even
included a lot of stitching details.
To create this look, the image was
broken up into pieces, exported and run
through the DRAWings embroidery effect. The converted ﬁles where imported
back into CorelDRAW to be powerclipped into the original shapes. If extra
realism was required, the design could
have been recomposed in Adobe Photoshop, and the connecting stitches and
rough embroidered edges also could have
been maintained.
The process of simulating embroidered
looks digitally should be quick and devoid
of the cost investment for true digitizing.
This process can provide the sales support needed to ﬁnalize orders and provide
enough details to encourage customer
conﬁdence in the fastest-possible way
without headaches.
Thomas Trimingham has been working
in screen printing for more than 21 years as
an industry consultant, freelance artist, and
high-end separator. He is an award-winning
illustrator, designer, and author of more
than 110 articles on screen printing art and
separations. For more information on screen
printing or to contact Thomas, visit screen
printingartist.com.

Suggested

Reading

Like this article? Read these other
screen printing graphics and design
articles at impressionsmag.com:
* "Screen Printing Artwork for
Beginners, Part 1"
* "Screen Printing Artwork for
Beginners, Part 2"
* "Make Color Matching Easier"

Figure 5
impressionsmag.com

February 2014 | Impressions

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