Watch out for those filters. I delivered a design to a customer and a friend of mine who was visiting her noticed the design didn’t look that good. Thankfully she insisted my client get in touch to find out what the problem was. The design was lots of little letters and looked….well nasty. She called me and I asked for her to email a scan and the stitch file of the design so I could get a look. My sample had been fine so I wanted to check what had happened. Had the fabric played a part? What backing was used? I know the machine is new and in good working order, but what about the needles?

When the sample and file came through it became obvious that a small stitch filter had been used. Usually smaller than .4 or .5 mm for 40 wt thread can be filtered out there is no visible difference in the design. The filter will illuminate the small stitches that were created when digitizing that would cause thread breaks on the machine if left in. You need to be careful if filtering larger than .4 since the design might have been created to need small stitches. If I know that metallic thread is being used I’ll adjust the design so it isn’t necessary to use small stitches since metallic thread doesn’t like all that bending. If I am doing 4mm height letters, I have to be careful to adjust things like the central bar on A to not be filtered out. What was happening with my client was the filter was set so high (.8 mm) and she had removed many of the necessary stitches to create the small letters.

Often I recommend clients to download the design sent to them directly to the machine. That then avoids the problem of their software doing something to the design that I had not intended.

The Embroidery Dinosaur

Beverley Field