subject: The Three Steps Of Customizing Embroidered Shirts [print this page] During the first stage of the embroidery process, the artists for the project start work on creating their custom design to fit the projects (and the clients') needs. The artwork is designed to fit the desired garments whether it be embroidered shirts, hats, jackets, or others, and then the client is contacted to finalize the size, colors, and overall appearance. Once the design is finalized, it's sent to the actual embroidery department.
Digitizing Stage
The actual embroidery process starts with the artist's custom creation. That artwork then has to be digitized, which is the specialized process of converting two-dimensional artwork into a stitch design or thread. Believe it or not, you can't take a digital formatted image such as a jpeg, tif, eps, or bmp, and convert it directly into an embroidery tape. The digitized has to manually recreate the artwork using stitches; meaning the digitizer is programming the sewing machine to sew a specific design with specific colors with specific type of stitching. The manual process is known as digitizing. Also, because embroidery is in three dimensions, some exciting effects can be included to spice up a normally flat piece of artwork.
The Production Stage
Once the artwork has been digitized, it is ready to be put into production. Production embroidery is an extremely hands-on process. Before the sewing of the garments can begin, specific thread colors must be loaded by hand into the machines. A spool of thread for each color for each sewing head must be loaded as well.
The machine itself must be programmed by the operator to sew the design in a particular sequence and a particular speed. The garments must then be hooped individually, by hand, then loaded into the machine. Once the design is complete when it's sewn, the garment is taken off the machine, un-hooped, and sent to the next and final step in the production process.
Finishing
After the garments have been sewn, they go through a finalizing process. During this final step, the garments are inspected for quality and individually trimmed of any excess backing material, then folded, packaged, and made ready for shipping to the client.
