Embroidery
Stitch intricate, multicolor designs on a variety of fabric surfaces
Machine embroidery takes a designed pattern and stitches it into the chosen material creating detailed and intricate designs. Most machines can’t work with a standard JPG or PDF but instead need a special pattern file which is often determined by the brand of the machine.
These patterns can be created by hand or converted from an image when used with a piece of software known as a digitizer.
In most cases, photographs are not best suited for embroidery as there are too many colors in such tiny sizes that it becomes impractical. Instead, designs typically should exist with a handful of colors and be more simple in design.
Some of the most common brands of embroidery machines today are:
- Babylock/Brother
- BAi
- Bernina
- Husqvarna
- Janome
- Pfaff
- Tajima
There are two styles of embroidery machine. There’s the long arm, single needle that is fairly similar in appearance to a sewing machine. These can stitch with one color at a time, requiring a manual color change by the user any time the machine needs to change from one color to the next.
The other style are multi-needle machines. Often having anywhere from 6-10 (or more) needles, each of which is threaded with a different color. These are designed for the machine to automatically switch from one color to the next as needed.
