For the Business of Apparel Decorating
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/467566
20 1 5 M A RC H PRINTWEAR | 61 ning at 1,000 stitches per minute equals 10 minutes of run time—if only it were that easy. Production never runs at 100 percent. Bobbin and color changes, as well as thread and operator breaks, all factor into the pro- duction time. There are two options for increasing out- put. The first is to add more embroidery heads, but this is not a viable choice for most embroiderers. That leaves the second option: reduce stitch counts in the design. While minimal stitch count is a reasonable expectation, don't sacrifice quality to reduce stitch counts. There's a fine line between stitch-count reduction and design quality. There are several factors that contribute to a high-quality design, such as density, under- lay, pull compensation, and stitch lengths. When a design has too many stitches and multiple problems, such as thread breaks, it results in needle breaks and distortion. If you charge by the stitch, why not beef up the design instead of reducing the stitch count? Unfortunately, the additional income generated from the extra stitches quickly dis- appears because of production-related prob- lems. On the flip side, too few stitches leads to a smoother sewing design but visual prob- lems, such as fabric show-through. APPLIQUÉ Appliqué is a great way to control the stitch count. With appliqué, you can reduce as much as 80 percent of the stitches with- in a design, which can save a tremendous amount of cost as long as the material pric- ing is figured into the design. A fancy, high- end material can quickly negate any cost savings from a reduced stitch count. Be- cause appliqué has a higher perceived value than traditional embroidery, these costs can often be passed onto the customer. Appliqué can also save time—and often turn the impossible to possible. Let's say it's noon on a Wednesday when a coach comes into a single-head embroidery shop for a full-back design of a basketball with some text wrapped. He wants 20 jackets for a banquet Thursday night. If the end result were a 100,000-plus stitch design, it would be impossible to complete the job on time. By replacing the fill of the basketball with appliqué material, the new stitch count would be roughly 25,000 stitches. Completing the job on time would be challenging, but possible. (See Figure 1) A form of multimedia, appliqué combines one decoration process with another. Other forms of multimedia that can reduce stitch counts include screen printing and embroi- dery, direct-to-garment and embroidery, embroidery and sublimation, and embroidery and rhinestones. ADJUST PROPERTIES Design properties include a combination of underlay and density. Think of underlay as a primer for a top coat of paint. If you use a heavy primer and top coat, it will look thick. Moving this same concept to embroidery, a thick layer of underlay, followed by a thick layer of stitching will cause material distortion as well as sewing problems and excess stitching. Many people trust the default values in their software, but design properties are not only unique to the sewn material but also to the individual objects within a design. In Figure 2 and 3, notice how the exact properties were used for underlay for the column stitch even though one column was significantly thinner than the other. Taking a moment to adjust the underlay type on the thinner column reduces the stitch count and creates a smoother sewing design and improved quality. The material plays a large role in the amount of density needed for the elements of a design. White stitching on blue denim requires less density and underlay than white stitching on blue fleece, and blue stitching on blue denim requires even less density. Figure 4A (left): This is the original design, which is larger and requires more stitches. Figure 4B (right): The image shows the main part of the design resized. Figure 4A (left): This is the original design, which is larger and requires more stitches. Figure 2 (left): Notice how the same properties were used for underlay for the column stitch even though one column was significantly thinner than the other. Figure 3 (right): Taking a moment to adjust the underlay type on the thinner column will not only reduce stitch count but also create a smoother sewing design and improved quality.