Choosing Designs & Fabric for Machine Embroidery

In this lesson, we'll learn how fabric affects design selection, how design and fabric affect hooping and stabilizing, and how thread interacts with design and fabric. So have you ever had the perfect design, the most luscious threads, and a wonderful fabric, and a bad result? It happens. Sometimes it's our choices, sometimes it's just chance, but we have a lot of choices to make and we wanna minimize the chances. Still, there's a chance something can go wrong.

We can't control everything. So don't expect perfection on every time. So assuming a well digitized design, you could have the wrong fabric, you could have a bad hooping, you could have the wrong stabilizer, a bad needle. There are all kinds of things that can go wrong. So just because you have a bad result doesn't mean it's a bad design.

And understand that there's no such thing as a one size fits all design. A lot of times we think that just because we purchased a stock design that we should be able to put it on everything and anything, and that's just not true. Some designs just work better on certain fabrics than others. If you want a really universal design, then it's probably applique. So what is the definition of quality embroidery?

Well, it's a well-prepared design that's suited to the fabric and item being broidered. It's a properly maintained and tuned machine, using the correct needle for the thread and the fabric. It's the right thread for the job, and that means both the top and the bobbin. And it's an item suitable for embroidery that's smoothly hooped in the right position, in the right size hoop, with the hoop properly tensioned, the right topping if it's needed, and the right backing. So when we think about it, fabric is really in control.

It's what controls what thread we use, what needle we use, what design we can use. And so you need to think about all of these things. So let's look at some samples. I didn't put the mesh grid behind this and you can see how the Terry loops are kind of covering up the design. Is this a problem?

Well, you kind of have to decide that for yourself. But I can tell you this little piece down here that I put on the flat border, this would not do well on a Terry cloth towel. If you want designs like that, you need to have a smooth area, or pick a smooth towel like a linen towel to put those kind of designs on. Now, we also need to think about large, dense designs. So you would not put a really big design on a t-shirt.

T-shirts just can't support that. This one has a lot of designs scattered over it. This is a purchased shirt. You can see how it's kind of wrinkly. And one of the things we need to consider as home embroiders, and we don't always think about this, is the cost of embroidery.

So if you have a cheap $5 t-shirt and you put a 200,000 stitch design on it, if we think that stitches or designs cost a dollar per thousand, which is not really true, but that's like a $200 design on a $5 t-shirt. Does that really make sense? It doesn't. It's not going to make it into a $205 t-shirt. We do that as home embroiders, but maybe we all need to think about that a little bit more.

So think about the cost versus the result. Is it going to be worth it and will the design, will the fabric support it? Now, one thing, you know, don't really know when you buy a design whether it's really gonna work on your fabric. So hopefully when you buy a design online or in a package, you can see an actual sewn, scanned version of it. I see a lot of designs online that are just rendered out of the software.

And frankly, I kind of wonder if they've even been sewn. If you can see an actual stitch design, then you know that at least someone has stitched it on something and gotten a good result. So that's a clue as to whether it might work for you. So here we have a couple of bird designs. Our decorative bird here.

This one would not work well on towels. It doesn't have a lot of outlines, so it would work well on a t-shirt. This one is a little denser. It too doesn't have any outlines. Outlines can be a trigger.

Outlines are more likely to be off and cause problems. So this bird is going to be able to be sewn on fabrics that maybe this one can't, like towels. So we could sew this on a towel. We wouldn't sew this one on a towel. This one I might consider not sewing on something like chiffon, because chiffon is very light and drapey, and this is going to be a big, heavy thing that's not going to allow the fabric to really drape.

So that might not be a good choice there. You can still get good results with outlines around fill stitches on a knit. And you can see on this one, I have perfect running stitch outlines on this. I did use a fusible mesh cutaway on the back. So I got a nice stability.

I don't think I used any typing on this one. And one thing you need to think about is these outlines. I'm really not a big fan of outlines. I don't put outlines on a lot of my designs because there's more of a tendency for them to be off. So if you can find a design that has outlines, be sure to test it on a fabric to make sure that you get good results.

And when you look at it on a screen, these outlines won't be perfectly in line. If they look perfect on the screen, then you're in trouble when you sew. When look at a design, look at stitch directions. So this is a pretty dense design and you can see that we have stitches radiating out in all these different directions. The more stitched directions you have, the more the fabric is gonna push and pull.

Because remember, we said it pulls in along the length and pushes out along the sides. And we've got all these links going out so it's pulling in on all these different directions. That's one reason we have warping here. But another reason we have warping is this is denim. We have just too many stitches for this fabric.

Now, another popular thing to embroider on is screening. And if I put my hand under here, you can see that this is really see-through. And this is the opposite problem that we have from denim. We have a very open design here and we don't have enough fabric to actually stitch on. I've chosen a kind of scrolly leaf design and it doesn't have any outlines.

I would be in trouble with outlines on this. And I used a wash away, even though I know that it's gonna go away and there won't be really any support. I'm not too worried about that it's not real clean and crisp. I wanted it to be see-through. I didn't wanna have any stabilizer behind there.

So sometimes to get a good result, we will stitch on something else and applique it on. And that's what we've done on this t-shirt. Here, I have a t-shirt and I want a big, full front design. So the designs have been appliqued onto squares of fabric, and then they've just been stitched on with a blanket stitch. This is a great way to put a big design, a full front design on a really lightweight garment.

It's also a great way to make use of your four by four hoop. If you only have a small hoop, sometimes you feel out of place trying to get a really big design on something. In this, we have a nice overall look without any bulk or weight, and we can still do it in our small hoop. Sometimes the fabric gets in the way of our design. So here we can embroider these flowers because they're pretty solid on top of this stripe.

But down here, these designs are pretty busy. They wouldn't work well on this stripe, they would just get lost. So we've embroidered them on little squares. And then once again, used a decorative stitch to just tack them down and let 'em fringe out. This is really cute.

This is also a great way to use your test sews. So you can test sew on some fabrics and maybe apply them onto something else. So here's a green vest where I've done a lot of embroidery. As home embroiders, we like to put a lot of embroidery on things, and sometimes we just go overboard. We end up with shirts that end up looking like a billboard for our design stash, and that's really not a good idea.

I've gotten away with a lot of designs on here because I've used two or three different fern designs and sewn them monochromatically. And I did place them on the fabric before I made the vest. And if I flip it over, you can see that I've put some on the back, but not on the side panels. So you can get an overall look without bombarding people with your designs. So here's another example of a design gone bad and where to use a good one.

This little wine bag has an embroidery on it and you can barely see it. You can kind of see the effect because it's got batting under there and some cutaway stabilizer, so it has a Trapunto effect, but we really can't see the thread and it's easy to totally miss the design. This is velour and the stitches just sink in. So when you're using a running stitch design, you're better off on a smooth fabric like this quilt. So these designs were quilted in the embroidery unit.

This quilting was also done in the embroidery unit, and I wanna show you the back. So if we look at the back, it looks like we have blue stitching on the back, but this is white bobbin thread. And what's happening is that our top thread is being pulled to the back and it's not especially pretty. So this one doesn't really look too bad, but keep in mind that the back of embroidery is not going to look wonderful. So another thing we need to keep in mind is scale.

Here's a puppy that I've embroidered on a youth shirt and it looks great here as a left chest design. But when I sew it on this little baby onesie, it becomes a full front design, because this design really just kind of fits on the front of this shirt. So you might want to shrink that design down and have a small version. And you can do this in your software. This is a pretty big scaling from this other one.

So if you scale a design this much, you'll definitely wanna test it to make sure it works, because these running stitch outlines may not work once you've resized the design. So we have a shirt that's been embroidered. And notice the placement on this, it's all down here. I'm not sure that I want daisies dancing across my belly. Maybe you wanna shoe off your belly, so that works for you.

But another thing I'd like to point out is this design here. And you can see that it's really prominent that the blue fabric is showing through on this design. And is that a problem? Well, kind of only you can decide. What you need to think about is embroidery is an embellishment.

It's not meant for absolute full total coverage. It's thread on another fabric. And here we have a light color thread, and light colored threads are pretty translucent. They aren't opaque. Now, could I have used a 30 weight thread?

Yeah, but this would be bulky then and it might kind of bubble. And I would rather have it look like this than be bulky. Besides, it kind of shows the pattern a little bit more there. Now, one thing you need to think about is your fabric. And here we have a heavy duck or canvas fabric.

And what's going on here is that we have a heavy weave and as the needle comes down, it's gonna get deflected from one side to the other. So it's not going to have a perfectly smooth edge. It's gonna be kind of jaggy. And it's just what we call an embroidery fact of life. It just happens.

We can't control that. If it really bothers you, then embroider on something smooth and applique it on. Now, sometimes we have special techniques. So this little pillow is a cutwork design. It's from the Hardanger collection.

And I've chosen to put this chiffon behind. And I did that because if this were really used as a ring bearer pillow, you wouldn't want the rings to fall into the pillow. So I've put that under my wash away stabilizer, because with this type of design, you're going to sew an outline, cut it out, not cut the stabilizer, and then sew the rest of the design, and then I'll wash out the stabilizer and you'll see that chiffon show through. So check your designs. If they use a specialty technique, you wanna be able to follow through and get the right result.

Now, sometimes we don't embroider on fabric, We embroider on wood, or paper, or metal. And here I embroidered on wood. And you don't wanna pick a really dense design for this. You don't wanna use a very large needle because it can split the wood. Also, I'd like to point out that right in here, these stitches are actually falling right into the grain and they're just practically disappearing.

And you can see maybe up here, the wood is almost starting to split. So when you're picking a design, pick something with curves. Don't pick something with straight lines, or it might just cut the wood apart. So there are a lot of different things that you can embroider on. You just really need to know how the design sews, how to stabilize it, how to hoop it, and that's why we practice.

You need to test, and you need to test on the same thing that you're going to sew on. So go to your thrift store, pick up some stuff and test sew on it.