Sewing Outlines

Written by Nita O'Keefe from Fancy That Designs  This tip is for those of us who sometimes have problems with the outline being off or a part of the design stitching on top of another part. Outlines being off registration are almost always caused by one of two things. Either the hoop got bumped or the design was not properly stabilized. Sometimes it will be due to a poorly digitized design, but more often it will be caused by one of those two things. By poorly digitized I mean that the design has all the fills running in the same direction and no underlay.    Many times all the fills will run at the default angle of 45%. This is on the bias of the material and will cause a pull in that direction. Many times an outline will be off because of a thread nest that has occurred. Sometimes it is caused by a broken needle. When you clear away the thread nest and start stitching again, many times the design will have moved a bit due to the pull. It does not take much for the machine to be pulled off track a little bit. Just a tiny bump to the hoop can do this. Then when you start stitching again and realize that the design is stitching over on top of itself and have to stop and pick out stitches, it is very frustrating.    I have found that most of the embroidery machines have a forward search feature. All of mine do. The way to cure the above problem is to always stop the machine, turn off the machine and then restart it, forward search to the right place and then start sewing again. This will reset the machine and the design will be back in the proper place.   Also if you have one of the machines that has a feature that allows you to combine designs at the machine, you should always use that. Mine has an embroidery edit feature. You can use this to bring the design up in the machine, save it to memory and then if your thread nest or broken needle or any of the other things that can happen do. You can then turn off the machine and let it reset itself, turn the machine back on and bring the design back in from memory. Then it will be at exactly the correct placement and you can forward to the correct spot to start stitching again. This way , you will return to the correct placement even if you have positioned the design differently than it comes up from the card.    Other times ,the design will be off due to the hoop getting a little bump during the embroidery process.  The same cure works for that too.  Reset the machine.  Sometimes you will be doing a design on fabric or something large and heavy.  This can create a drag that will pull the design off the track too.  Find a way to rest the fabric on the table so that is not dragging against the hoop.     Happy Stitching Trails!  Nita in Texas