When it comes to work uniforms and branded apparel, most people think of embroidery. Embroidery is when you decorate your item using a needle and thread to make your design. The final product has depth to it and doesn’t just sit on top of the shirt like screen printing. . Embroidery tends to be much more of an art than a science, which means that it takes a lot more than just a needle and thread, or even a sewing machine to do a good job.
The Embroidered Design Itself
When getting something embroidered, you’re going to hear the term digitized logo. No, that doesn’t mean your logo as a digital JPG or PNG file. You need a digitizer to take your JPG logo and convert it into a series of sequences of stitches that will be stitched on a garment. There are software programs that do it, but this where art can be greater than science. A software driven digitization is not always the best one. You’ll pay more for a really good digitizer, but it is worth it, especially for complex designs. Once you have a digitized file, you can use it over and over again. You’ll pay most folks a one-time fee to have that done, as there is labor involved. Be careful though. Some businesses will keep your digitized file and not give you the file even though they charged you for it. They don’t want you taking the file and going to a competitor. However, that should be YOUR file as you paid for it. You may also hear it called a DST file. That is the file extension that most embroidery machines use.
Thread Types Used in Embroidery
More often than not, you’ll see two types of threads used for embroidered designs, Polyester and Rayon. Rayon has high sheen and is fairly thin and soft. But that also means it is less durable. Polyester is stronger, keeps its shape a bit better and tends to be more durable. Rayon tends to be less expensive. You will probably see that in embroidered designs that are produced by the thousands.
The threads in your shirt fabric essentially form a “grid” that has a bunch of tiny little openings. If you choose a shirt with large openings, you may find the edges of your design aren’t quite perfect. For polyester shirts, you might find that the embroidery pinches the shirt fabric in a little.
Backing Material
You’ve probably seen some cloth on the inside of your shirt helping to hold together an embroidered design. That is the backing. Backing helps give your design structure and will make your finished product last longer. The design is stitched through both the shirt fabric and the backing when the shirt is embroidered.
Embroidery Machines
There’s a ton of embroidery machines on the market. You don’t need to worry about which one someone is using. But it helps to know how they are setup in order to make educated decisions about your project. Each machine uses a hoop to flatten out the shirt fabric to present a nice clean surface to stitch. You need to make sure your embroiderer has the proper hoops for your order, which most should. Understanding the need for a hoop will help you understand why you are limited to certain sizes of designs when decorating certain products, like hats.
Each machine is described by how many heads it has. One head means it can do one design at a time. A 10 head machine can stitch the same design in 10 shirts at once. Those are pretty big machines!
Where Can I Put My Embroidered Design
Most folks like to use the standard front left chest. However sleeve placements and yoke, or back of the neck placements are also popular. When it comes to hats, we are seeing placements all over the hat.
Pricing for Embroidery
Almost all embroiderers charge by stitch count. That number is generated when the logo is digitized. As you can imagine, the more stitches in a design, the more thread is used. In addition, a larger stitch count means that design is using the machine longer. More time and more material used means a higher price.
There are setups involved when it comes to embroidery. The embroiderer needs to load the right threads/colors for your job and get the DST file loaded in. So if you are only doing one shirt, then you can only amortize that setup cost over one shirt. If you are doing 24, that cost can be spread out. And if the embroiderer has a 6 head machine, he can run that in just 4 runs, as opposed to 24 on a one head machine, thus achieving some economies of scale. Therefore, you tend to see prices drop at around 6-12 pieces.