When you are creating a new embroidery design sample for a customer, it is wise to always sew out the sample on the same type of fabric that the customer is  purchasing for the finished product.  I know that you do not always have the same exact fabric, but use a fabric  that is similar in weight and texture.

A T-shirt fabric is a good substitute for a jersey knit placket shirt.  If you do not have a fleece fabric and your final product will be fleece, you can turn over a piece of sweatshirt fabric and use the backside of that.  The result will be very close.  An old worn sheet is a good subsitute for a dress shirt or even a handkerchief.  If you use your imagination, you can come up with a lot of close matches that will definietly work when you are creating your embroidery design sew out samples.

I have discovered that most embroiderers do their sew outs on squares of backing and they give this to the customer.  You really do not know what the actual design will look like on your finished product. The settings for various types of fabrics need to be adjusted correctly for best look on that fabric.

I have found by cutting up squares from old garments that my family has discarded works very well.  Instead of giving the garments away, I cut them up in various size squares and store them in plastic boxes that I have labeled:  T-shirt fabric, Sweatshirt fabric, Windshirt fabric, Terry cloth and etc. When it is time for a new sew out, these fabric squares are very handy.

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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What Do I Do It When I Have To Special Order Embroidery Thread For A Customer?  How do I handle this type of situation?

If a customer is looking for a special color that you do not carry and know that you will not be using this thread for any other order, charge  an additional 20% and require that he pay the entire thread bill.  Figure out how much thread you will need for that order and charge accordingly. Do not forget to charge for the freight.

How Do I Know How Much Embroidery Thread I Will Need?

There are 7 yards of thread per 1,000 stitches of embroidery.  There are 5,000 yards of thread on a cone of embroidery thread. Figure what portion of your design you will be embroidering in that color. Figure approximately what the stitch count for that area or color will be.  This can be found in most of the software programs.

Figure out how many yards of thread you will need for that embroidery.  Multiply that by however many pieces or embroideries you will have finished.  This will give you the total yardage in thread in the color that you will need for the entire job.  Divice that figure by 5000 and this will give you the amount of cones you will need to purchase.

If you have an oder for 200 peices and your custom embroidery design is 10,000 stitches, but the special color that you need will be 30% of the logo, you will need enough  thread for 3,000 stitches times 200 pieces.  This is a total of 7 yards times 3 for 3,000 stitches.  This equals 21 yards of thread  per special color for each embroidery.  21 yards of thread times 200 pieces equals 4,200 yards of thread.

As you can see, this is not even one cone of thread, but it would be very impractical to order 1 cone of thread for your machine especially if you have a multi-head embroidery machine.   Not too many people would run an order of shirts on a single head machine.  This is definetley a multi-head embroidery machine order.

There are a couple of ways that you can handle this.  You can order smaller cones of thread, keeping in mind, they only hold 1,000 yards of thread each, or you could order enough cones of thread to fill at least 1/3 of the total of machine heads and wind the remainder on empty cones.  If you have a 6 head machine you could order 2 cones of thread and wind the other thread on 4 cones.  If you have a 12 head machine, you could order 4 cones and wind the remainder on empty cones.

There are cone winders and bobbin winders on the market today.  The cone winders are very expensive, but the bobbin winders are very reasonable.  I wind my cones on an old industrial machine that I have on the bobbin winder.  It you study the situation, you can rig up your own system to do this. It is not hard, but will save you a lot of money and time if you need some extra thread to finish filling in an order.

I hope that this tip has helped you. Let me know if you have you have had a similar situation and how you handled it.  I would really appreciate it and so would other embroiderers out there in embroidery land.

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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This morning was one of those that really showed me the value of having great working embroidery tools.  I was faced with an issue that many embroiderers face. I created a huge embroidery error and I had to figure out how to fix it! It does not happen too often, thank goodness, but I just wanted to share a little bit about what goes on in the life of The Embroidery Coach when I am in a hurry and how I got myself out of this one!

I was in the process of making 2 sashes for a NY State DeMolay chapter and I did not program in enough colors for the design.  The phone rang, I left the machine and forget to finish the job when I went back!  I already had the lettering embroidered and it looked beautiful, but they have an emblem at the bottom and one at the top also.  I embroidered the first emblem on the bottom and of course I was off to the computer to do some more work!  When I went back to take it out of the machine, the last color was wrong!  I wanted to cry, but instead I got out my wonderful Peggy’s Stitch Eraser and went to work.  It only took me a few minutes and I had the entire design removed!  I was able to do so without removing it from the hoop so it made the resewing part go very well.

I layed new backing under the hoop on top of the needle plate, I reprogrammed the machine and increased my design by 3% and Wa La!!  It was perfect!  There was no sign of any error.  I was extremely happy!

Every now and then we all have a screw up!  Would you please share one of yours with me and let me know how you were able to solve your problem? I would really appreciate it and I know that many other embroiderers would also!

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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What embroidery backing & needle do I use on a 100% Polyester Shell Jacket for my embroidery design  is a  question that I have received many times.  There are a lot of variations to these polyester shell jackets.  Some have a bonded interlining on the lining, some have a vinyl coating on the back of the jacket shell fabric, some have both the bonded interlining and the vinyl  on the shell fabric and some have a plain thin outside shell with a thin polyester lining.

On all of these jackets use a tearaway backing and a sharp needle.  I prefer to use the 70/10 sharp needle for this type of embroidery  application.

There are some new jackets on the market with a vinyl coating on the back of the very thin shell fabric that seem to be very troublesome when you try to embroider on them.  This fabric has a lot of Spandex in it and is very stretchy.  For these jackets I would use the same 70/10 sharp needle, but I would switch to cutaway backing even though it is a woven fabric.  It appears to be a very thin fabric before the vinyl coating was applied and the embroidery wants to eat up the fabric.  I had to come up with a solution to fix 12 very expensive jackets for a customer that ruined these jackets.  This was a very experienced embroiderer, but it was a fabric that was very new and on the surface, it did not appear to be any different than many other jackets that they had embroidered in the past.

Make Sure Each New Embroidery Order Is Tested And Is Approved On The First Garment

Be very careful when you are faced with a new type of fabric and make sure that you test out the embroidery first.  If you have nothing to test on, it would have been better to run one single jacket and check it before you put all 12 on a 12 head machine.  When I had my embroidery shop, this was a requirement for all of my embroiderers, when they started a new job.  Run one and get it approved before you run the entire job!  If this is not a rule in your shop, make sure that you start doing this immediately!  It will save you a lot of headaches, money and unhappy customers!

Have you ever been faced with a situation like this?  Comment below and let me know how  you solved it?

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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I am in the process of creating a brand new embroidery video training site.  If you are or have been a student of mine in the past, you are familiar with my current site EmbroideryTipsAndMore.com.

Within a few weeks I will have the brand new site up with more information on it than the old site.  I am very excited about this new site.  It is going to be very clean and easy to find any of the information that you need at the time that you need it. 

It is also going to be able to be viewed in Firefox and on  MAC computers as well as Internet Explorer!  This has really been a huge issue in the past because my current site can only be viewed in Internet Explorer!

All of the current students will be grandfathered over into the new system at the current prices.  Anyone that joins our program between now and the new release date will be able to get in at the current price and will be able to stay at that price level.  I have an entirely new membership system and there are going to be more levels of membership in the new system. 

I do not have an exact release date at this time, but I will keep you posted.

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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The Truth About Embroidery Business Success” is a  comprehensive embroidery business book that will help anyone start their own embroidery business or show existing embroidery business owners how to increase their bottom line!   This simple to read embroidery business book was written by Joyce Jagger, The Embroidery Coach.

Starting a new embroidery business is not easy.  It is very exciting, but it can be extremely overwhelming with all that you need to learn in a very short time.

When I first started my embroidery business, I did not have any type of a guide to help get me started and I made so many mistakes.

My passion is to help get you off to a fast start!  There is no reason why you should start your embroidery business without the sufficient knowledge that will help you to succeed right from the very beginning.

If you are someone that has already started your own embroidery business and is not having the type of success that you had envisioned, then this book will help you get on the right path to developing your own profitable embroidery business.

“7 Elements To A Highly Profitable Home-Based Embroidery Business”

• Planning Your Day-Setting Your Goals-Planning Your Business
• Create A Full Off Line and On Line Marketing System
• Knowing How To Price Your Products Or Services For Profit
• Carve Out Your Own Niche Market
• Find And Maintain Good Dedicated Employees
• Invest In Yourself And Your Education
• Develop Your Action Plan

Click on the book and order your copy today! This is an investment that will really help to change the way you are currently doing business!

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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Working With Stock Designs Part 2 is our next Embroidery Webinar of the Month. This webinar will be  next Tuesday afternoon April 27th at 1 PM Eastern time.  I will be working with designs purchased from “Great Notions” stock designs and “Dakota Collectibles” stock designs.

• In this webinar I am going to show you how to create a large jacket back sized design from a small left chest design.
• I will also show you how to remove pieces and create new pieces to replace the ones that were not working out the way that  you want them to do.  This very often happens in stock designs.  You may like the total look and it may be just the design that you customer is looking for but some of the peices in it just do not look good.  After this webinar you will have the answer to that problem!
• I am also going to take a small one color outline design and fill in all of the areas and give it some color.  This design also is a small left chest sized that my customer decided he wanted  for a jacket back after he saw the result of what I had done with the design.
• Do you know how to make teeny tiny stars?  I am also going to be showing you how to do this in the webinar!
• Do you know how to make a new design from pieces of other designs?  I am going to show you how to do that!

You will get all of this information and much more from this series and you will be able to take any digitized design that you have had in the past and make a lot of changes to it.

I will be offering this very informative series as a  video product that can be purchased after we the webinar.  The purchase price is going to be sold for more than the price of the webinar, so you want to make sure that you attend the webinar if you are an Embroidery Tips and More member.  If you are not, you can go to Embroidery Webinar Of The Month to gain your access into this webinar.

If the timing is wrong for the webinar, you want to get access to it and register for it anyway.  All of those that are registered will get access to the videos after the webinar.  I know that the timing may be wrong for some people.  I just cannot have a time that is perfect for everyone, so make sure that you take advantage of this offer while it is still available. 11 am Tuesday will be the cut off time.  Do not wait another day!

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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Last week I hard the privilege of participating in the ASI Education webinar, ” The 5 Hot Apparel Markets.”  This webinar was full of information what you can do to approach and work with these  Markets.

The 5 Hot Apparel Markets that you should be focusing your efforts on are:

• Financial Institutions
• Government Agencies
• Health Care
• Education
• Service industry

Nicole Rollendar, Editor of Stitches and Director of Education for ASI Central, did an excellent job of creating this webinar and I had the privilege of working with her, Pat Baldes of Personalizationsolutions and Jennifer Cox from NNEP. Pat and Jennifer are both very sharp and knowledgeable in the embroidery and all areas of the apparel market.

To watch the replay of this webinar click on link and it will take you directly to the webinar “The 5 Hot Apparel Markets”.  I know that you will enjoy this webinar.  You will want to take notes at you are watching it.

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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Requirements For A Good Digitizer

How do I find a good  digitizer for my embroidery designs  and what do they charge?

First of all, what is a good digitizer?  A good digitizer is someone that will work with you and help to make you look good to your customer.  A good digitizer will know the embroidery process and know what it takes to make your design look the best that it can on your particular type of fabric.  A good digitizer will ask the following questions:

• What fabric is this design going to be sewn on?
• Will you be using this design for any other type of application?
• What format do you want the design to be finished in?
• Will you want to increase or decrease the size of the design from the original size?
• Can I make some modifications to the design to make it sew better such as increase the letter size or choose a different font style?

There can be many other questions, depending on the design and the information that you have given them. When you are looking for a good digitizer, look for one that uses the same software that you do and request that you have a copy of the outline file.  This will allow you to make changes such as resizing or removing lettering from the digitized file.  You may have to pay a little more for this privilege, but it is well worth it.

Digitizer must know embroidery production

Make sure that your digitizer knows production so that you have as few trims and color changes as possible.  Make sure that he or she sews out the designs before sending them to you.  This is a problem with a lot of digitizers, especially with Graphic Artists..  They get their software and think that since they can create any type of graphic art, they can digitize.  This is far from the truth.  They don’t usually know anything about the sewing process and have no idea about push and pull comps, underlay or density.

The best place to find a good digitizer is through the sales rep in your area that sold you your embroidery design software.  He or she should be able to direct you to someone that will be the type of digitizer that you are looking for.

Most good digitizers charge from $9.00 to $20.00 per thousand stitches.  Sometimes they charge by how long it takes and sometimes it is by how complicated the design is.  There are even good digitizers that will give you a choice and will create designs based on a scale.  If you want a lot of detail it will cost you more than if you want less detail.  If you want color blending this is an additional charge on top of the stitch count.  If you find someone that is charging less, then you had better try them out on a design that is for a customer that would not complain if it is not the kind of quality that you envision.  If the price is low, I would truly beware.

This brings me to the subject of going over seas for your designs.  Yes, their designs are very inexpensive; but can you communicate with this person or is it a company that employs a lot of digitizers?  You have no control over who you are going to get.  Sometimes the designs are OK and sometimes they are horrible and you cannot specify who you want to digitize your design.

This can also be true in this country if you are dealing with a large company.  They will send your design to the next person that is available. Sometimes they even contract them out to other companies and maybe overseas.   This is even worse.

Digitizer must sew out designs

Make sure that your digitizer sews out the designs before sending them to you.  Many digitizers with such a low fee do not sew out the designs before sending them to you.  Many of this type do not even own an embroidery machine.  If you have a design that you have purchased for a low price and it has a lot of issues in it, it will cost you money in the end.  It will drive up your production time so far that it will cost you money to do the job.

You want to make sure that you are working with someone that will give you a trouble free design and you can make money on their work.  This is truly one area that you do not want to skimp on in your embroidery business!  This is one area where you get what you pay for. Don’t forget you are going to charge the customer for the digitizing fee.  This is not a charge that you absorb in any way shape or form!

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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“Cruise To Embroidery Success”

It is time to plan for your next vacation and join us on Royal Caribbean’s “Mariner of the Seas” for a fantastic time on our 3rd annual “Cruise To Embroidery Success”.

On January 23, 2011 we will be departing from Los Angeles, California for a vacation of a life time to the Mexican Riviera!  This past cruise to the Caribbean was such a great time and I am really looking forward to the one coming up January 2011.

I had the opportunity to meet some of the most wonderful people that I have ever met in this industry. These  embroiderers came from all walks of life. We had embroiderers that were just starting out in the business as well as embroiderers that had been in the business for over 15 years.  There were young embroiderers and others that started their business’ after retiring from their life long careers!  We had a grand time networking and sharing all kinds of information about our personal lives,  embroidery, heat transfers, digitizing, and whatever else was on the minds of the embroiderers that would help to grow their business!  This was networking at it’s best!

Visit the ISS Show Before The Embroidery Cruise

This year the cruise will be held in conjunction with the  “ISS Show” in Long Beach, California. This is the largest ISS Show held during the year!   This is a great opportunity for  you to see all of the new equipment and products that are available and have a chance to talk directly to your suppliers.  The show starts January 21 and we are leaving for the Mexican Riviera on January 23rd.

This is an opportunity of a lifetime that you do not want to miss!

Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach

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