How are the Custom Designed Caps Made?

After you have designed your cap using our simple online wizard, one of our experienced designers will make your design ready for the embroidery machine to stitch your design to the cap, this will ensure that every cap is created properly.

We use only the latest state-of-the-art embroidery machines which are fast, reliable and produce the best stitched embroidery works on the market to create your hat.

Machine embroidery is a term that can be used to describe two different actions. The first is using a sewing machine to "manually" create (either freehand or with built-in stitches) a design on a piece of fabric or other similar item. The second is to use a specially designed embroidery or sewing-embroidery machine to automatically create a design from a pre-made pattern that is input into the machine. Most embroidery machines used by professionals and hobbyists today are driven by computers that read digitized embroidery files created by special software.

With the advent of computerized machine embroidery, the main use of manual machine embroidery is in fiber art and quilting projects. While some still use this type of embroidery to embellish garments, with the ease and decreasing cost of computerized embroidery machine, it is rapidly falling out of favor. Many quilters and fabric artists now use a process called "thread drawing" (or thread painting) to create embellishments on items.

These are the basic steps for creating embroidery with a computerized embroidery machine.

• create a digitized embroidery design file
• edit the design and/or combine with other designs (optional)
  
• load the final design file into the embroidery machine
  
• stabilize the cap and place it in the machine
  
• start and monitor the embroidery machine

Embroidering the Design

Finally, the embroidery machine is started and monitored. For commercial machines, this process is a lot more automated than for the home embroiderer. For most designs, there is more than one color, and often additional processing for appliqués, foam, and other special effects. Since home machines only have one needle, every color change requires the user to cut the thread and change the color manually. In addition, most designs will have a few or many jumps that need to be cut. Depending on the quality and size of the design, stitching out a design file can require a few minutes or an hour or more.

Embroidery glossary

Appliqué
French term meaning applying one piece of fabric to another. A cut piece of material stitched to another adding dimension, texture and reducing stitch count.

Backer/Stabilizer
Materials, generally non-woven textiles, which are placed inside or under the item to be embroidered. The backing provides support and stability to the garment which will allow better results to the finished embroidered product. Backings come primarily in two types: cutaway and tear-away. With cutaway, the excess backing is cut with a pair of scissors. With tear-away, the excess is simply torn away after the item is embroidered. Additional types which are dissolved either by water or heat also exist. For all of these the terms backing and stabilizer are often used interchangeably.

Bobbin
A bobbin is a small spool of threads inside of the rotary hook housing. The bobbin thread actually forms the stitches on the underside of the garment. The bobbin on an embroidery machine works in the same manner and for the same purpose as on a standard sewing machine.

Digitize
(Often mispronounced as "digitalize.") The computerized technique of turning a design image into an embroidery program. Special software is used to create plotting commands for the embroidery machine. The commands are transferred to the machines logic head by a designated embroidery "language."

Fill Stitch
Fill stitches are a series of running stitches sewn closely together to form broad areas of embroidery with varying patterns and stitch directions.

Hoop
A clamping device used to hold the backer and fabric in place in the machine.

Running Stitch
A running stitch is one line of stitches which goes from point A to point B. A running stitch is often used for fine details, outlining, and underlay.

Satin Stitch
Also known as the zig-zag stitch by which a line, border or edge is produced by thread being alternately stitched to either side of a baseline. Satin stitches are generally limited to a maximum of 1/2" in stitch length before some alternate technique such as split stitching or fill stitching must be used.

Underlay
A stabilizing pattern of embroidery which, if used, precedes the main body of satin or fill stitching. It consists of one or a combination of running stitches for centering, edging, paralleling or zigzagging the design area.