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Machine Embroidery: A Marriage of Fabric and Design

comments (1) November 1st, 2008 in tools & supplies, embroidery

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Threads Magazine, editor

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Small designs scattered over a garment can maximize the embroidered effect. These shapes are from the Dot Font design card by Cactus Punch.

Small designs scattered over a garment can maximize the embroidered effect. These shapes are from the Dot Font design card by Cactus Punch.

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You may also need to stabilize the fabric by hooping it with a backing. Most embroidery-stitch designers recommend always using a backing, but very stable and tightly woven fabrics (such as organza or terry-cloth toweling) may not need backing at all, depending on the design.

Backings come in a variety of weights and types— cutaway, tearaway, heat-disintegrating, or water-soluble (see Backings and toppings). A backing should always be hooped beneath the fabric unless hooping will cause permanent marks, as it would on velvet or Ultrasuede. In that case, use a sticky backing in the hoop, and adhere the fabric to it. Or hoop a tearaway backing, and adhere the fabric with a temporary spray adhesive like Sulky's KK2000.

I suggest using tearaway backings with woven fabrics and designs without a lot of fill areas. As a general rule, use cutaway backings with all knits and with wovens on which you'll embroider a design with a large stitch count and large fill areas, especially if it has a running-stitch outline.

Toppings are not hooped but rather placed on top of the hooped fabric to compress or mat down nap or pile and to improve the resolution of stitches by keeping them from sinking into the fabric. Toppings also improve color coverage when the thread color contrasts greatly with that of the fabric. They can also add artistic effects or three-dimensional and raised effects. Toppings are torn away around the completed design.