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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