A Definitive Guide to Creating Custom Embroidered Clothing

Most people who are having large numbers of clothing garments embroidered (from fancy dress costumes for fun nights out to promotional uniforms) are interested to find out how the magic actually happens. Embroidery techniques may have advanced to the stages of digitalisation, but computers can't simply do all the work.

To have an image embroidered onto clothing it must first be digitized. What this means is that the image must be scanned on to a computer using CAD (Computer Aided Design) or CAM (Computer Aided Manufacture) technology and then put into a format that the computer can read. Because different image have different numbers of pixels and different sizes, sometimes when they are digitized the image becomes 'skewed' and doesn't come out looking the same as it did in the original picture. As a result a human is needed to look over each image and ensure that it looks the same as the original, before it is embroidered on to the fabric for the customer. If this isn't done then hundreds of designs could be sewn onto fabric looking terrible and in some cases unrecognisable, not only meaning that the customers don't get their products but also that thread and employee time are wasted.

After the checks to ensure the digitising went well are carried out the digitised design can be transferred to a machine ready to be sewn onto the fabric. Any designs that have been warped during digitising will need to be processed by hand to be returned to their original state. Next for the sewing machine comes the process of reading the image and the pattern that was formulated from it. The way these patterns are put together sometimes means that the design doesn't look anything like it should do until it's finished, due to the layers of thread and different shaped and colours that need to coincide. Because the pattern was derived from the original image you can rest assured that it looks perfect at the end.

Depending on the design and the fabric that it's being embroidered on to, sometimes the sewing machine will need to change needles and threads, which sometimes requires manual work from a human. Because of this, the processing time for the average embroidered image is about one or two days (from the moment that the image is received from the customer, to the moment that it has been fully embroidered and ready to be sent off). If an individual would like many copies of one image then there's no need to digitize each one, but simply use the same sewing machine and computer as they will already have the digitized image stored on them. This means that it's much quicker to process a batch of 50 shirts with one design on them than 10 with all different ones.

This brings us to the conclusion for the process of embroidering a design onto a garment, explaining how they are done both individually and in mass corporate clothing manufacture. The now thriving industry owes itself to advances in computer aided manufacturing technology, which has cut down the time it takes to embroider an item of clothing considerably. This brings us to the conclusion for the process of embroidering a design onto a garment, explaining how they are done both individually and in mass corporate clothing manufacture. The now thriving industry owes itself to advances in computer aided manufacturing technology, which has cut down the time it takes to embroider an item of clothing considerably.