10 Tips for Creating Amazing T-Shirt Embroidery

t-shirt embroidery

T-shirts can be easily given a professional look with the help of embroidery digitizing. In fact, T-shirt designing has become one of the most popular and creative things in the modern world with almost all outlets aiming for it.

There are different ways to create beautiful, professional-looking designs on T-shirts. Is equally important to choose the right design, fabric, the right embroidery machine or stabiliser and you need to be careful on washing – but it’s worth it! This article examines some of the tips that you can use to renovate your T-shirts to make your friends and family jealous!

How to Choose Right T-Shirt for Embroidery

Choosing the right kind of T-shirt for embroidery digitizing is extremely important. As a starter, you can choose a quality shirt, preferably made up from good quality cotton. Such T-shirts blend quite well with stitches and remain far more stable than light-weight shirts made up from some other material.

In addition, heavier fabric shirts stretch less while stitching and do not shrink while laundering. Still, be sure to choose a T-shirt that guarantees no shrinking after the first wash. There are a number of stores available now that sell 100 percent cotton T-shirts. You can choose such T-shirts as they are the most suitable for embroidery purposes.

How to Choose a Design

If you ask an embroidery digitizer, he or she will tell you the most obvious thing – large designs with huge density for the stitches are not at all ideal for T-shirt embroidery. Instead, you should choose a design which is quite spread out and has an ideal amount of white spaces between the stitches. However, remember that such designs look the best on opaque and darker materials.

Huge number of stitches pull the fabric and makes it uncomfortable to wear. In addition, it makes holes in the fabric in case you have chosen a light-weight T-shirt. By opening the density and introducing white spaces, the design is less likely to pucker.

How to Choose Colors for Embroidery

Choosing the color of the shirt for embroidery digitizing can be a tricky thing. No matter how funny and interesting this part of embroidery may seem, it is important to understand that some designs and colors may look vibrant on the computer screen than what they look for real.

An embroidery digitizer views the color of the T-shirt in Lab that has optimal lighting. However, computer screens have applied filters that may bring up a color issue. Therefore, there are certain things that must be remembered while choosing the color, such as:

  • Avoid using pastel shades on the lighter shirt as these colors may not be visible from a distance. You can even decide to give a darker outline to lighter shades to make them more visible.
  • Use lighter colored inks with darker colored shirts. Be careful with using darker colors such as forest or maroon as these color may sometimes distorts during printing, giving the merchandise a dull appearance.

Pre-Wash T-Shirt

Pre washThere is always a possibility that a fabric could shrink, no matter what the seller claims. Therefore, it is better to wash and dry the T-shirt before it is embroidered. There are chances that the creative design would pucker if the fabric shrinks even a slightest bit.

Most commonly, T-shirts are made of cotton or a cotton and polyester blend and such fabrics may shrink. While some people argue that washing and preshrinking the linen is a waste of time, there are many benefits associated with this step. For example, it ensures that the colors remain fixed in case of dyed clothes. In fact, a piece of fabric must be washed and pre-shrunk before actual embroidery digitizing is carried out.

How to Choose Embroidery Stabilizer

embroideryIt is easy to use an embroidery stabilizer and in fact, its use is highly recommended in case you are handling a tricky or a difficult fabric. Clothes that are squishy, loosely knitted or stretchy are sometimes a bit difficult to handle and that is where the role of a embroidery stabilizer comes into play.

Embroidery stabilizers act as a transfer tool and are used as a tool to support the fabric as an embroidery digitizer works on it. It helps keep the delicate or difficult fabric in place to make machine embroidering easy and simple.

There are different types of embroidery stabilizers. For example, a fusible tear-away stabilizer is used on the front of the fabric. The design can be traced to this type of stabilizer, which can then be ironed to the piece of fabric.

How to Choose Correct Needle and Thread

needleWhen embroidering on T-shirts and thick fabrics like those of sweatshirts, it is best to use a needle with a ball point. In addition, you should always try to use the smallest needle available to accomplish the embroidery task. Remember, the quality of your embroidery design would depend ultimately on the kind of needle and the floss that you are using. Therefore, do not hesitate to invest a little bit more on them to get amazing results.

Embroidery threads are available in different material – satin, cotton, silk and pearl cotton. In case you are embroidering something that will be washed often, prefer to use a polyester thread as it is resistant to bleach and does not fade away quickly.

How to Choose Proper Topping

To perfect your embroidery, you can choose to add a water-soluble topper. It helps hold the weave of the fabric intact. You can add a thin layer of a water-soluble topping on the area that you have just embroidered. It adds a professional presentation to the material by keeping the thread on the top of the knit.

The perfect use of adding a topper is that the excess of it can be easily removed by either rinsing or washing the piece of fabric.

How to Choose Proper Hopping

hopping embroideryA perfect piece of embroidery is also a result of using proper hoop. However, people are often confused about the size of the embroidery hoop that they should use.

There are a number of embroidery hoops available in the market – in different sizes and material. The material is generally either plastic, wood or metal and its choice depends on the kind of work that you will be conducting. No matter what material you choose, make sure that its quality is not compromised with. In addition, choose a size that you are comfortable to hold in one hand, while embroidering with the other one.

How to Remove Excess Stabilizer

Make sure that you remove extra stabilizer once the embroidered piece is ready. You can carefully remove the stabilizer close to the edges of the stitches and round them. In case you have sensitive skin and don’t want to get irritated, cover excess stabilizer with a fusible tricot.

Finish the Embroidery on T-Shirt

The last step is to finish the embroidery by pressing the back of the embroidered area. You can choose to use a piece of cloth to gently put pressure on the embroidered area. It will remove any excess wrinkles or hoop marks from the cloth that may appear while handling the T-shirt.

Conclusion

With the right set of tools such as needles, thread, perfect fabric and hoops, conducting embroidery digitization on a T-shirt is not that tough. You must remember that perfection comes with practice and that it is not possible to achieve perfection in just one day. Keep on striving to give your old pair of T-shirts a new, innovative and creative life and you will master the technique someday.

 

Latest posts by Alex Kutler (see all)

Alex Kutler

Being an Editor at Absolute Digitizing, I am an admirer of creativity and very fond of writing about embroidery and its trends.

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3 Responses

  1. Warner Brown says:

    This is the nice work and very informative post about embroidery digitizing

  2. Warner Brown says:

    Nice, Interesting and informative. Thanks

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