Home Services SAMPLES Contact us Testimonials Embroidery Tips and Tricks Embroidery Resources
 
Sign me up: 3D (Puff) Embroidery Quality is important to me.
 
  What makes us call ourselves as a superior quality 3D Puff digitizers?

Quality is subjective. But a sure fire definition is how peers like yourselves rate about us, which holds the most value than what we can say about us. The latest verification on 3D Digitizing (or) Puff Embroidery was done by Amy in Ohio. Amy had tested four digitizing companies and posted us the scan of the sewouts. Here it is in Amy's own wordings:

"Wow, I am amazed that you did a much closer reproduction to the customer's original logo. There were absolutely no registration problems at all! Out of the four digitizing companies, your designs were about a fifth of an inch smaller, and 370 stitches lower, out of the 4274 stitch design. In my 14 years of experience, I had rarely seen such a high quality digitizing at this small a size. I am truly amazed."

From my personal observation, this is what we normally hear when a person utilizes our service for the first time. We have been in the 3D Puff digitizing (also called Raised embroidery) business for generations, and it requires a dedication to excellence, on every single order. This has helped embroidery companies achieve a special status in their community. Word of mouth has happened for most Embroiderers and we have been praised repeatedly for this very reason.


How do you ensure the quality of 3D Puff digitizing?

Abcoln is a pioneer in offering digitizing services, especially on 3D Digitizing (or) Puff Embroidery digitizing. We have two dedicated embroidery machines with cap attachments; dedicated solely and exclusively for sewing out the samples of your orders. Every single 3D Digitizing (or) Puff Embroidery order goes through our sampling process, sewn out and thoroughly verified before it gets delivered to you. As a practice, we repeat this process, until we are satisfied with the resultant quality. Sometimes, we have identified improvements and sewn them again for an enhanced elegance. My personal objective is to save your production time and invariably your personal time involvement in these designs. Place an order with us and you will be able to marvel at the difference.

Sign Me Up. Let Abcoln prove me.
I need more details.




What is 3D Puff Embroidery?

This is an amazing type of embroidery, which uses a foam underlining to achieve an extreme three dimensional (3D) effect. There are a variety of colors of foams, which help in achieving a greater variety of products for your clientelle. Thick materials are better suited for this embroidery, including hats, bags and thicker jackets. To make your clients logo really (and literally) stand out, use 3D embroidery.

What are the typical sizes for Puffy foam?

The most common ones are 2mm and 3mm foams. There are even 4mm and 5mm foams available, from most manufacturers. Gunold for example carries all of these sizes.

How Tos and Step by Step instructions for sewing 3D puff embroidery

3D puff embroidery is a simple process that creates an incredible outcome. For a vast majority of the cases, the design has to be specially digitized for 3D puff embroidery. The following instructions does not cover the steps for digitizing a 3D puff design, but merely goes over the application of the embroidery.

Items needed:
On top of the regular embroidery, only the following two items are needed:
1. A digitized file created specially for 3D Puff embroidery, such as one created by ABCOLN.
2. A 3D embroidery foam. There are two sizes that are available: 2mm and 3mm. The difference between these is the amount of thickness of the 3D that will stand out. Most thread suppliers have these embroidery foams in a variety of basic colors.

Even though the following steps are provided for a hat, the same process is applicable for other types of materials.


1. Getting Started:
Hoop the garment as you would for regular embroidery. Also, make sure that the correct backing is used, specific to the type of garment. In the foregoing example, we are going to do this with a single piece of hat backing on a six panel hat, with a 270-degree cap frame.

Remember, 3D Puff designs can be sewn on nearly any type of thicker garments. Please do not try this on delicate fabrics. 3D puff embroidery uses very high density to cover the foam, and the delicate fabrics might get ripped by the higher density. As always, please sew a sample embroidery on a similar fabric before trying it on the actual product.

2. Creating a guideline:
Load it on the machine and start the design. The first color that is sewn is also called as a guideline stitch. This acts as a guidance for placing an appropriate sized 3D foam in that location.
Also, for a design that is created with high quality, this guideline stitch will be done in the same color as the outline.
Please feel free to consult with Abcoln.com for any help that you might need.

3. Cutting the foam and sewing the 3D puff:
Immediately after the guideline stitch is completed, stop the embroidery machine. Now, using the outline provided in the previous step, cut a 3D puff, with is large enough to cover the outline. The color of the foam should be as close to the color of the thread you are stitching. When it is not possible to get an exact match for the foam color, use as close of a matching foam color, as possible. If you have only minimalistic options, you can choose, white foam for the lighter colors and black foam for the darker colors. Use a tape to secure the foam over the embroidery area, at the outside. Please ensure that the tape does not hover over the area where the outline stitches was created. Please note that if you are sewing it on flats (not hats), you may not need to tape it at all. Alternatively, you can hold the foam instead of taping it, but taping it is advisable. Once the machine has been restarted, the stitching should hold the foam in place.
Please reduce the speed of the embroidery machine to about 400 stitches per minute. In most cases, embroidery on a foam should be as smooth as a regular embroidery. This helps in reducing thread breaks and providing a cleaner penetration of the needle on the fabric. On a good quality design, such as one designed by Abcoln.com, there will not be any thread breaks for the entire design.

4. Cleaning up and Getting it ready for the customer:
When the embroidery is complete, remove the hoop from the embroidery machine.
The high desity stitches would have torn away the foam and the excess might fall off automatically. At this point, if there is any excess foam still lingering around, it can be easily peeled off from the item.
If the logo contained any tiny portions, these small pieces of foam might still be remaining. Loose pieces of foam can be brushed away using a soft brush, cloth or tweezers. If there are any tinier pieces of foam poking through, you can use a sharp object, like a pin, to poke it back through the stitches. It might be amazing to see that once we poke it, the stitches will move over the pieces and cover it. An alternative way that is useful when doing it on larger productions, is to use a heat source, like a hair dryer, to heat the embroidery. The heat will shrink the small fragments of foam making them disappear under the embroidery. ALWAYS test the heat source on a sample, before trying it on the production garment.


Voila, now you have a beautiful creation that the customer would be excited about.

Please feel free to utilize the professional help of ABCOLN.com, if you have any questions.

Sign Me Up. Let Abcoln prove me.
I need more details.






Here are 10 Tips and Tricks for Stand-Out 3D Embroidery (Based on an article)

There are some measures to take to make sure your 3D embroidery designs offer the best effect. Use the following tricks to help your embroidery really stand out:
1. Use a fairly large ballpoint needle. Ballpoint needles make larger holes than sharps, so will perforate the foam more easily and ensure the foam gets cut properly during sewing. This also makes it easier to tear away excess foam once the design is complete.
2. Make your top tension tighter to prevent bobbin thread from looping under the design.
3. It may be necessary to slow the speed of your machine. Time and experience will tell you the optimum speed at which your machine sews best when working with puff embroidery.
4. Always sew out a test sample prior to the production run. Use the same type of materials as you will use for production. This will help pinpoint potential issues before a production run.
5. Thinner sheets of foam may produce less loft, but also may be easier to work with. Choose the thinnest size puffy foam you can that will produce the effect that you want.
6. The layering of the 3D Puff embroidery has to be precisely controlled through a digitizing process. Abcoln is here to help you achieve this.
7. Use a needle that perforates the foam so it can easily be removed. The more the foam is perforated, the easier it will be to tear off when the stitching is complete.
8. If you find that little pieces of foam are being left behind, run a heat source (a heat gun or a hair dryer) over the finished design. If the fabric does not react well to heat, weed the design with a pair of tweezers to remove excess pieces of foam.
9. Puffy foam can be used on a wide variety of fabrics, but works best with flatter fabrics, like hat material, which don’t compete with the foam. Plush fabrics, which have a high degree of loft on their own, will result in a less noticeable 3D effect.
10. Avoid using puff embroidery on delicate fabrics. Designs for puffy foam embroidery require more density, which may tear a more delicate fabric.
Thanks to Print Wear for the list. Adaptations about how Abcoln can help has been done to the original list.

Sign Me Up. Let Abcoln prove me.
I need more details.


Needle Hint:
Multiple foam suppliers recommend a ballpoint needle because it creates larger holes in the foam, making its removal easier.

Was this post helpful?
If you could write back to us, we would love to hear about it. Your support, encouragement and thoughts will help tailor this post in making it even more tuned and useful. Here is our email address for you to reach us: abcolnfashions@gmail.com


Sign Me Up. Let Abcoln prove me.
I need more details.




This page was updated just now (mid March)

Abcoln Fashions is constantly testing innovative ways to embroider using special effect embroidery.
Watch this website for the newest in custom embroidery digitizing.

Home | Services | Samples | Sign up | Contact us | Testimonials | Terms & Conditions | Resources
The sample embroidery pictures on this website are for illustration purposes only. They are copyrighted by the respective owners. To use them in whole or part in any way is strictly prohibited.
Copyright by Abcoln Fashions, 2007 - 2024. (All rights reserved)