Factors To Consider In Embroidery

If you think you’ll make your work easier by learning embroidery on a machine instead of by hand, think again. You’re going to have to learn all about machine arts, simply switching to understanding a different set of skills and factors than if you were working with your hands. One thing you will certainly need to master if you try machine embroidery is an understanding of fabrics and how they behave. Each fabric will be able to handle certain types of designs beautifully, while failing completely with other sorts of designs.

Using a machine for a dense embroidery design, for example, will stress a knit or loosely woven fabric, sometimes even pulling the weave apart. And in a fluid type of cloth, a design that’s dense will stop the flow and hang on the fabric like a frozen block. Conversely, a thick fabric or one with a heavy pile, like terry towelling or fleece, is unsuitable to small designs with a lot of open space. Such a design would pretty much vanish, unless a large patch of covering fabric were added, upon which it would then be stitched. Decorative machine stitching requires an understanding of which designs work best, or work the worst, with which materials.

Even when you do match the design and fabric well, you might still find the stitches not coming out as they should. You also need to ensure that the machine is set up properly, because some of the problems might originate there. For example, if the thread and bobbin tensions are wrong, then the sewing may produce puckering. Another cause of puckering, though, could be that the cloth was stretched too tightly over the hoop. Machine embroidery requires a balancing of the fabric and design, and a balancing of machine settings with both of them.

Are you thinking perhaps this machine embroidery may not be as easy and straightforward as you assumed? Using a machine does make some tasks easier, but it also creates new tasks that must be mastered. In the same way you’d have had to learn the hand arts, you now have to learn all about machine arts instead. Part of what you need to think about, as you contemplate learning to use the machine, is which set of skills, either the hand-related or the machine-related, do you find more interesting and rewarding?

Kenny Leichester is a foremost expert in the interior design industry specializing in the outdoor or patio settings using outdoor patio furniture, patio heater, outdoor cushions, patio lighting and so on to create exquisitely beautiful layout. His work on patio umbrellas designs and so on are widely distributed and is a regular contributor to PatioShoppers.com.