Embroidery and Digitizing Terms, Explained Plainly
The vocabulary suppliers use without explaining — underlay, pull compensation, merrow, tatami, jump stitch — in plain language, with why each matters to you.
How digitizing actually works, from a digitizer's side of the screen. These guides cover the settings that decide whether a design stitches cleanly: underlay, pull compensation, density, stitch types and sequencing. They also cover the problems people bring us most often, like puckering, text that fills in and logos that won't sit flat on caps or fleece. Read them before you order and you'll know what to ask for, and what a good file looks like when it comes back.
20 articles
The vocabulary suppliers use without explaining — underlay, pull compensation, merrow, tatami, jump stitch — in plain language, with why each matters to you.
What a person actually does when redrawing your logo, why auto-trace output looks fine and behaves badly, and how to judge the result.
How to describe a stitch-out problem so it gets fixed first time, what counts as a revision versus new work, and when a file should be rebuilt instead.
A naming convention that survives, what to keep besides the DST, and how proper records turn a reorder into a five-minute job.
What separates providers beyond price, the questions that reveal quality fast, and an honest look at whether digitizing in-house makes sense for you.
The errors that show up on the machine rather than the screen — too much density, wrong underlay, bad sequencing — and how to spot them in a proof.
Why lettering fills in below a certain size, the actual numbers by typeface and thread weight, and the four ways to get smaller text to work.
How appliqué works, why it slashes stitch count on large designs, the four-step machine sequence, and where it beats solid fill outright.
Why big designs are harder than small ones — stitch counts, fabric distortion, multi-hooping, run time, and when a patch is the smarter answer.