Can I Re-Size the Digitising Embroidery files you have sent me?

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It remains one of the top three questions we receive about embroidery digitising and is worth of a reprint of this article.

One of the most frequent questions we receive from customers is “Can my embroidery file you’ve sent me be re-sized?” Unfortunately this is just not a simple YES or NO question and I could quite literally write an entire book on the subject. However, in a nutshell the simple answer is that most embroidery designs can be re-sized by about 15 to 20% without sacrificing quality. However, that is not always the case and the balance of this blog discusses the factors that contribute to scaling designs to this or larger degrees.

Resizing already digitised embroidery designs is not a straightforward task like resizing an image file. Digitised designs represent stitches having particular characteristics. If the size of the design is altered, related stitch parameters have to be adjusted and aligned.

Many a time, customers want same design on multiple products. Clearly, the same design size will not work for the jacket back, caps and T-shirts. The good news is that if such a situation was anticipated during embroidery digitizing, you don’t need to worry a lot. Otherwise, designs have to be digitised from scratch; something nobody will be much pleased to do.

By incurring some nominal measures, while digitised embroidery designs are prepared, you can avoid the unnecessary labor of digitizing all over again. as a professional, one should anticipate such upsells, even if such a request was not made by the customer in the first place.

For this article, we will be seeing how to align and make adjustments while up-sizing a small embroidery digitised design to a large one. Say, converting a hat logo to a jacket back design. Therefore, all instruction only hold true for up-sizing. For downsizing, that is resizing a large design to a small one, following instructions are not always relevant.

Underlay Settings:

Underlays will be mostly distorted if the above lying design size is increased. To solve this, additional underlay must be added to cope with an increase in pull. Usually, a double fill or tatami underlay at 90 degrees would suffice. Adding the underlay is a complicated process and a better way is to program underlay beforehand.

Choose layered underlay from the beginning and you can avoid the frustration of adding underlay again and making other related adjustments. In case of layered underlay, there is no need to add additional underlay. It will lower the stitch count by 30%. Consequently, there will be no fear of thread breaks as there will be no additional pull. For a layered fill, standard practice to create three layers. In each layer, 1/3 of total stitches are used. For instance, if 18,000 stitches will be used in total, a single layer will only contain 6,000 stitches.

An alternative to conventional underlay, this background fill, make resizing of digitised embroidery designs much more viable. Digitise the background fill using the re-calculated stitch density. For background fills, you have to make sure that stitch is zero. With the first layer, start at the top and digitise your way to the bottom. Once done, duplicate it twice. For the second layer, change the start and stop positions. Start from the bottom and finish at the top. Now, add an edge run underlay to this layer. Finally, add the third layer, starting from the top and finishing at the bottom.

The layered background fill is now ready. Size of embroidery design can now be increased or decreased, without increasing the susceptibility to thread breaks. Apart from this, background fill provides a stable ground where digitised embroidery designs can be easily registered, without requiring the push and pull compensation.

Using The Texture:

Large designs magnify even the minor details of your work. In addition to magnifying the minor details, enlargement of any design opens up, otherwise concealed, blank and plain spaces. Therefore, certain elements have to be added in order to retain consistency of the design.

Texture provides an easy option to fill-up this space. In the background, you can add an embossed version of the top-stitched logo. As only top fill layer is visible, add the texture to the third and topmost layered fill.

An embossed logo is only a texture option. You can experiment with other creative textures like the matte finish or create gloss by using larger stitches or use any other suitable texture. Just don’t have plain space left on large embroidery designs. It just doesn’t look right.

As you can see, layered fill smooths the process to a large extent. Apart from resizing, layered fill also helps to solve other embroidery registration problems like distortion. So, as a standard practice, try to learn and use layered fill in your future digitizing.

Knowing that it is an option, you can use the original fill. Reduce its density and duplicate it three times. Change the start and end position of the second layer and this is how quickly you have made the adjustment for resizing.