Concepts of computerized embroidery

Draft

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Introduction

There are many concepts related to computerized embroidery. In this entry we shall try to summarize the most important ones that are of interest to a absolute beginner.

Although avanced home user software such as the free Stitch Era universal is pretty smart in converting vector drawings to stitchable sections and the latter to stitch commands, you may have to inverne manually and/or at least set a few parameters in order to get a decent enough result.

• What thread to choose
• What backing (solid or solvable fabric on the back side) to use
• How different fabric types behave
• What underlay stitching to use in different situations
• Basic stitch types
• Push/Pull (the fact that a stitch is pulled down when it locks)
• Stitching order

Threads

Most popular embroidery threads are made from Polester and

Backing

Backing also called stabilizer is either a woven cutway or tearway fabric or some type of solvable foil that are used underneath the fabric to provide some stability and support.

Underlay

Underlay will stabilize a stretchable fabric for a section that you would like to stitch. Underlays also can be used to create a 3D effect or otherwise change the look of stitched layer on top. Finally, underlay is also used to even out a surface, e.g. tack down sticking out threads on towels or flatten out corduroy.

There are several kinds of patterns used, however one could distinguish the following three families of underlay:

• No underlay
• Soft (little)
• Hard (a lot)

In addition both soft and hard underlays then can use different patterns like:

• Some kind of lines that are orthogonal to the final stitches. E.g. for an "o" letter you would use a circle, for a larger filled pattern a rectangle.
• ZigZag
• Some kind of diagonal lattices, .e.g \\\ or XXX

Fabric and fiber types

Fabric has an impact on the result. In particular, certain types of fabric are more difficult since they are stretchable. Stretchable fabric could be stabilized in several ways that can be combined:

• By using some backing
• By using an appropriate underlay
• By using some pull compensation (?)

Other fabric such as bath towels and fleece present the problem that fine-grained stitching can "get visually lost".

Below are some fabric types:

• Canevas
• Cotton
• Curdory
• Denim
• Fleece
• Jackets
• Leather
• Nylon
• Lycra
• Knit wool
• Terry (towels)
• Twill
• Wovens

Stitch types

There are main stitch types, but we could distinguish three five main types

• Running stitches (to stitch lines): -------
• Satin stiches are used to stitch wider lines, i.e so-called columns. Typically, a narrow zigzag stitch is used.
• Fill stitches (to fill in larger sections in various ways)
• Jump stitches (i.e. no stitches), to get from one point to another.
• Lock stitches should be used at the end of all elements (in particular columns and fills)

Running stitches

• The bean stitch uses the following pattern like two stiches forward and one stitch back, i.e. it will create a strong solid line.

Push / Pull

(don't trust this yet)

Push and Pull refer to the idea that a fabric can be either pulled in or pulled out by the stitches.

• Pull compensation will slightly widen the width of stitch. It is applied to two sides of a section since the pull happens in one direction. The pull direction depends on the kind of filling used and the underlying fabric.

Links

Glossaries

• Glossary of terms at embroideryauthority.com

Tutorials

• A Stitcher’s Guide to Pull Compensation by Kathy Jones.

Book lists

• lacis, an online story has books on Machine Embroidery