Small Detail & Lettering Embroidery

In regards to small lettering or detail work, it’s easy to get frustrated – it is one of the hardest things to digitize & embroider. In order to understand small lettering & detail, we must first understand the relationship between thread, needle & garment.

When making a needle penetration into fabric, the needle passes through the garment – when this happens, you create a ‘hole’ in the garment the size of the needle. This is where we need to understand the relationship of stitch length and needle penetrations. As an example, a 75/11 needle has a blade size of .75 mm and widens as you go up the blade (about to a .80 mm). So, this is the size of the penetration that goes into your fabric. If you have a stitch length of 1.0 mm, that means your needle penetrates the fabric and takes up .80 mm in one penetration, then, it travels over 1.0 mm and makes another penetration of .80 mm into the fabric. This means there is only .20 mm of fabric in between the 2 penetrations.

In addition to the needle penetration points, the thread is also a factor. Thread is dimensional – it has a twist to it and also has a size. Most often, embroiderers use 40-weight thread. This means that 40 kilometers of thread is equal to 1 kilogram of thread. So, 30-weight is heavier because it means only 30 kilometers of thread is equal to 1 kilogram and conversely 60-weight thread is lighter weight because 60 kilometers of thread is equal to 1 kilogram. When using heavier thread to do smaller work, it can bulk up the design.

Typically, it is not recommended to make needle penetrations less than 1 mm apart because of how close each hole becomes and the thread weight factor. Having close needle penetrations can encourage breaking thread and packing the garment with unnecessary needle points. Although, sometimes we need to make close needle points to attain the detail work needed.

When working with small lettering or any small detail work (such as thin satin outlines), we want to use the smallest needle and smallest thread. When using thinner thread and a smaller needle we can achieve the clean look of small lettering and better detail work.

On the digitizing side, we need to create a design that has the least amount of needle penetrations & trims. Every time we do a trim on the machine, it creates more needle points into the fabric for the tie stitch so that the stitching does not unravel.

How do we decrease the amount of bulk? We can change several settings such as Underlay, Pull Compensation, Tie Stitching (with Closest Point Connection), Density, Stitch Shortening, and Basic Step/Stitch Length.

Underlay – this is the foundation of your stitching. It helps with several components of the embroidery – most importantly helping contain movement and laying a skeleton of the stitched area. When doing smaller design work, you don’t need as much underlay because you are stitching in a smaller area but also you want to decrease the amount of stitching.

Pull Compensation – this helps with push / pull of fabric. Smaller movements need less compensation. By decreasing this setting, this will help reduce bulk.

Tie Stitching – As stated before, we need the least amount of needle penetrations. So, with smaller lettering, we try to have each area connect at the closest in and out points. The out point of the previous area should be as close as possible to the in point of the next area – meaning the exit stitch and entry stitch should be tight to help in hiding the connection (jump stitch).

Density – This is going to be based on the weight of thread. If you have a heavier weight thread, you should back off the density. Although, if you have a thinner weight thread, the density could be about the same as the density for larger filled areas with the heavier weight thread.

Basic Step – Typically this can be decreased to better fit the smaller areas. This will help with getting the detail you need.