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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