Embroidery Digitizing Basics – The Secret to Precise Lettering

The hallmark of a seasoned embroidery digitizing professional lies in his or her adeptness with lettering. Letters, as in numbers and alphabets, form an integral part of commercial embroidery. These appear not only in the form of company names or monograms, but also in the form of taglines and mottos. Whatever be the reason for lettering to be part of an embroidery design, the bottom line is that it should be the anchor of the artwork, which basically means that it should be legible, crisp and prominent.

In order to master the art of digitizing for lettering, we’ve put together certain tips and pointers that’ll help create a design worthy of a second look:

Font it Right!

Needless to say, not all font types are created equal. And, when it comes to digitizing, the difference can be quite blaring. While digitizing for block type fonts will be a breeze for any embroidery digitizer, their serif type cousins could leave you enraged. However, every problem has a solution and the best way to deal with stylish fonts is to give them a minimum height of 7mm.

The reason why block type fonts sew out great is because their column width is uniform throughout, while serif type fonts have widely varying column widths. So, while the thinner part of your serif type letter might disappear into the fabric at 5mm tall, your block type letter will still hold its own. For this, we recommend a minimum height of 7mm for serif fonts and 4mm for block types.

Density Dos and Don’ts

To get that density right just remember these easy tips. Always increase the density as the column width goes up, and decrease it as it goes down. Furthermore, increase the density as the letter gets taller; however, remember to decrease it as the letter shrinks in height.

What’s Your Type?

As an embroidery digitizer, it is your duty to know commonly used materials and their treatment like the back of your hand. While cotton is the easiest to embroider, fleece, terry cloth and knitted fabrics can be quite a challenge. To get spot-on results on the latter, its best you look into using the right kind of stabilizer, increasing the pull compensation, or even put down a light tone-on-tone fill to firm up the foundation and make your letters pop. You should also look into increasing the height of your font to make it prominent.

Underlay Mantras

In order to determine what kind of underlay to use, always use the width of the column for reference instead of the height. For widths of .7mm-1.2mm use a running stitch underlay. For those above 1.2mm, we recommend a zigzag underlay.

Of Trims and Tie Offs

When dealing with small letters, we suggest avoiding trims between letters. This is important, as a trim is followed by a tie off that prevents the embroidery from unraveling by putting in a knot, which in turn produces a tiny bump. While you can get away with this in larger letters, you can’t hide them on small ones. The best advice here would be to use the “closest join” feature on the software and travel seamlessly from one letter to the other.

The Long and Short of It!

If you want to be known as a master embroidery digitizer, we suggest remembering to use those short stitches every now and then. Although mostly overlooked, short stitches are a great help around bends in letters such as ‘L’ and ‘U’. When working the corner in such letters, stitches tend to get accumulated into a messy bump on the turn and only short stitches can come to the rescue.

At Powerstitch.com, we are dedicated to educating our customers with expert embroidery digitizer advice on the intricacies of machine embroidery and digitizing. With over 8 years of professional expertise, you can count on us for impeccably digitized artwork that delivers spot-on results, while saving you time and money.