Greetings everyone and welcome to the first Full day of Autumn, 2014.\u00a0 I will admit I am a sucker for this season, it is my favorite. \u00a0I love the fall holidays, football and with temperatures finally cooling down in Phoenix, the weather.\u00a0 This time of year also officially kicks off busy season in our world and from now until Christmas we will be burning the candle at both ends keeping up with our busy customers.<\/p>\n
This month I want to talk about an issue we hear a lot at Qdigitizing.\u00a0 One of the most challenging customer concern areas I work with on a daily basis is, \u201cHow come our samples look so good and what you just sewed out doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why then do our samples look better?\u00a0 There are possibly many reasons but here are the most probable:<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 Your sample should always be done on the material of your apparel project.\u00a0<\/strong> Since it is not possible for us to have every imaginable fabric in the world at our disposal we stock a good quality pique knit, a jersey knit, woven, twill, performance fabric and cap material on hand at all times.\u00a0 Our machines and our digitizers are dialed in to provide superior results on these fabrics.\u00a0 We understand and you should too that it might be necessary for us to \u201ctweak\u201d a program to achieve the same results on your materials that we get on ours.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Backings \u2013<\/strong> The second biggest mistake I see is people using the wrong backing solution.\u00a0 Tear Away backing should almost never be used for a sample unless you are trying to see how a tear away will work with your design on a spcific product where you intend to use tear away backing and in that case your top material should be the same as the test backing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 We have a lot of experience embroidering samples!<\/strong>\u00a0 We have 8 embroidery machines sewing samples 24 hours a day, 6 days a week.\u00a0 We sew a lot of samples and we have gotten really good at it.\u00a0 Experience and technique are important when running embroidery machines, even if it is just samples.\u00a0 One mistake I see over and over when people compare our samples to theirs is sampling on backing material only.\u00a0 Sampling on backing only is the \u201cCardinal Sin\u201d of embroidery sampling and should never be done.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Different embroidery machines embroider differently.\u00a0<\/strong> That is a fact of life.\u00a0 The results we get on our machine will differ from your machine for no other reason than we are using a different machine.\u00a0 Furthermore, some machines are better than others and to make it more confusing, some machines are better at certain things (like embroidering on caps) than others.<\/p>\n 5.<\/strong>\u00a0 Equipment maintenance \u2013<\/strong> We have an in-house mechanic who keeps our machines in like new condition all of the time. \u00a0We aren\u2019t doing this to show off, we have to.\u00a0 If we have a machine break down during a peak period the result can be significant production delays.<\/p>\n There are many other reasons sample can look different in your facility than ours.\u00a0 The most important thing to remember is embroidery (commercial or hobby) is a world of uncertainties.\u00a0 Every time you run a new design you are reinventing the wheel.\u00a0 While there are some rules fo thumb to go by you should approach each new project like it is a new project and anticipate you might need to adjust the design, the backing, the machine or all of the above in order to achieve the best possible results.<\/p>\n