Eileen's Top 10 Tips
1. When removing tear-away stabilizer, lay the embroidered fabric wrong side up on a flat surface. Place your index finger on the edge of the embroidery while the other hand gently tears away the excess stabilizer.
2. To iron embroidered garments, place the embroidery right side down on a fluffy terry cloth towel on an ironing bard. Press from the wrong side.
3. Use your iron to make positioning lines for embroidery. Fold the fabric over a long ruler and press a crease in the fabric on the fold. Open the fabric and use the pressed crease to align embroidery designs or continuous lettering. Simply press the crease away after embroidering.
4. When hooping an item, place the outer hoop on rubberized shelf liner. The textured rubber ‘grips’ the hoop which eliminates shifting during the hooping process.
5. When hooping many blanks, it’s often helpful to turn the finished item inside out so that the bulk of the garment rests above the machine bed during the embroidery process. ‘Open’ the garment to expose the design area and embroider the design.
6. Always print a template of your embroidery design to ensure perfect placement. Insert vellum or a transparency into your printer. Open your embroidery design in embroidery software. Go to File, Print and print the screen.
7. Always stitch a test design on the intended fabric, stabilizer and thread combination. Our friends at OESD (Oklahoma Embroidery Supply and Design) say, “There are two kinds of embroiderers, those who do a test sewout and those who wish they had!”
8. To avoid hoop burn on delicate fabrics, wrap the inner ring with self-adhering athletic wrap or simply use Magna-Hoop.
9. Eliminate fabric bleed-through by placing a scrap of white tear-away stabilizer ON TOP of a dark fabric when embroidering light colored threads. Tear off the excess stabilizer before stitching the final outline to avoid ‘pokies’. The reverse is helpful; use a black tear-away on top of a light fabric when stitching dark threads.
10. Use the machine’s trace feature to make a final check on your design placement before stitching the design. Keep the target sticker or template on the hooped fabric, select trace and watch the needle as the hoop moves around the perimeter of the design. Make any final adjustments at this time.
