Tuesday, March 3, 2009

A Definitive Guide to Making Bespoke Embroidered Clothing

By Tyler J Anson

Most people who are having large numbers of clothing garments embroidered (from fancy dress costumes for fun nights out to promotional uniforms) are interested to find out how the magic actually happens. Embroidery techniques may have advanced to the stages of digitalisation, but computers can't simply do all the work.

To have an image embroidered onto clothing it must first be digitized. What this means is that the image must be scanned on to a computer using CAD (Computer Aided Design) or CAM (Computer Aided Manufacture) technology and then put into a format that the computer can read. Because different image have different numbers of pixels and different sizes, sometimes when they are digitized the image becomes 'skewed' and doesn't come out looking the same as it did in the original picture. As a result a human is needed to look over each image and ensure that it looks the same as the original, before it is embroidered on to the fabric for the customer. If this isn't done then hundreds of designs could be sewn onto fabric looking terrible and in some cases unrecognisable, not only meaning that the customers don't get their products but also that thread and employee time are wasted.

After the checks to ensure the digitising went well are carried out the digitised design can be transferred to a machine ready to be sewn onto the fabric. Any designs that have been warped during digitising will need to be processed by hand to be returned to their original state. Next for the sewing machine comes the process of reading the image and the pattern that was formulated from it. The way these patterns are put together sometimes means that the design doesn't look anything like it should do until it's finished, due to the layers of thread and different shaped and colours that need to coincide. Because the pattern was derived from the original image you can rest assured that it looks perfect at the end.

The only interruption in the process comes when the colour of threads or the strength of needles need to be changed by a human, rather than by the machine itself. As a result, customers usually have to wait between one and two days for their designs to be sewn on from when their image reached the embroidery company's manufacturer. Each design only needs to be digitised once because it gets stored on the memories of both the sewing machine and the computer, making multiple copies of one design very easy to process. As a result, the time taken to embroider the same image on a whole boxful of garments is considerably less than it is for even just half a box of different designs.

Whether it's embroidery done on just one garment or on 1000 this article has outlined the method and techniques used to get the job done. Embroidery has not always been carried out using computer technology and indeed not always with electronic sewing machines, but since the days in which these methods started to be used the industry has simply been growing and growing. Whether it's embroidery done on just one garment or on 1000 this article has outlined the method and techniques used to get the job done. Embroidery has not always been carried out using computer technology and indeed not always with electronic sewing machines, but since the days in which these methods started to be used the industry has simply been growing and growing.

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