Joanne Banko shares tips for preventing puckered embroidery as seen on It's Sew Easy TV show 2013-3

[Music] hi i'm joanne banco author and online educator at let's go sew you know embroidery has taken the world by storm and we all you know those of us that are embroidering we love our embroidery we have so many capabilities so much potential and so many possibilities to make beautiful things with our embroidery machines but there's one little thing that i know maybe more than one but this one particular thing that a lot of people struggle with and that is puckers so i want to share some tips today for some pucker-free embroidery and give you some just a few ideas there's we could go on we could probably do a whole book's worth but we want to touch on a few things that are prime reasons why you get puckers and some ways for you to avoid them so first we need to talk whenever we talk about embroidery we're dealing with fabric and stabilizer combinations and in my book i have a lot of different combinations listed i give you you know needles threads stabilizers and combined with certain fabrics i even have designs that were specifically designed for the fabrics that i used in the book but sometimes i want to deviate from that and i want to take the beautiful designs that are in the book that collection and create some garments that are not what was in there originally such as this dress so this dress is made from a very lightweight knit and my design itself was originally designed for a wool wrap so it's got a little bit of thickness to it and a little bit of weight if i don't do something to prevent those puckers and i just embroider that design directly on that lightweight knit i'm going to be in for a problem so that's going to give me the opportunity to tell you how i would conquer that well first of all i would always do a test to test is best i say that over and over and over again because it is so true you know they joke and say you know there are those that test and there are those that wish they tested but i always test my designs when i'm doing a new combination so again i knew that i needed to beef up that fabric a little bit the first choice i made was where to include the design to begin with i wouldn't want to do that design around the hem because it would just simply ruin the drape of the dress and it just wouldn't be compatible so i thought what about a center band that could work that also gave me the opportunity to stabilize that a little bit more so what i did is i fused a treacle interfacing to that entire center band area and then i still used what would be a traditional stabilizer that i would use with knits on the back and i secured that with a temporary adhesive i'm going to talk a little bit about these things in a minute but that is my temporary adhesive go-to to keep that connected and i've got a sample here of another um another way that that's that that's used what we've got is a stretchy fabric here and we've got a stretchy fabric here this is the same fabric look how that stretches when you embroider in order to prevent puckers you want to eliminate 100 on the stretch so if you're using a stretchy fabric you need to do something on the stabilizer side on the back side maybe two things like i did here to keep that fabric from stretching so it no longer no longer has that stretch factor so i used a mesh stabilizer and this particular one is fusible and this one works really good for a knit like i said it's it's ideal for that but we've also got other types that aren't fusible that we would use that temporary spray with so look at that look how nice and firm that is now another tip for embroidering without puckers is to always use the size hoop that most closely matches your design so in this case i think i used a 5x7 but whatever your design is match your hoop size to that you know some machines like tubular embroidery machines have a whole variety of mini hoops that work great for doing really small things big things are fine too but if your design is big you know use a big big hoop if your design is small use the smallest hoop you can get away with another thing that i like to do is i like to pre-test the tension of my hoop this is really one of my best all-time ever tricks so what i do is i stabilize my fabric and then i will go ahead and loosen the screw and hoop that so that it's easy to hoop i will tighten that up nice and snug and that is just pre-tensioning that that is just adjusting my hoop so that it accommodates the fabric now i pop it back out and i would do whatever positioning i need to do for placement and i like to put my hoops together like i put my foot in a shoe i do the front end first and then push it down in the back so you can see that's nice it's smooth it's taut always make sure you push your hoop all the way down so that is very very smooth and very very taut if we have any movement in here whatsoever we are going to end up with puckers because once the fabric then goes back to its original position it's going to wrinkle and it's going to crinkle around there so let's talk about other ways to to conquer that fabric that's soft like cotton is very pucker pucker-prone and so think about maybe pre-quilting that i did that on the collar of this and in this case i i used a baby flannel and really created a puckered look so that when i put my embroidery on top i've got basically plant pucker so i don't have a puckering of the embroidery but i can also stabilize fabric with some type of a liquid stabilizer or a spray that takes that soft and turn and makes it makes it crispy so that's another idea for you another pucker proof tip is to always make sure that your hoop is entirely full so if i'm doing something like this with a small point or a corner i want to make sure in this case i used a sticky stabilizer so that all of that is held in place there's no air space around that hoop that again would allow for movement what about a design that's really heavy and really thick this design is is beautiful but it is heavy and it is thick i stitched it on a pretty firm fabric but i knew that still would not be enough so what i did in this case is i fused medium weight interfacing kind of a similar idea that i did here so most often when i'm doing something that's home decor or craft i will beef up my fabric with fusible interfacing and then i'm going to get a much much better quality design another thing you want to do is add tearaway stabilizer so i like to use a lightweight tearaway this can be hooped with the fabric or it can be floated underneath the hoop so that it's not attached the beauty of this is it completely tears away so a lot of ideas for you a lot of variety choose your designs that match your fabric choose your stabilizer and make pretty pucker-proof embroidery

Channel: Let's Go Sew with Joanne Banko

Views: 1,046

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Id: IAOdUf64g3c

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 12 2021