Images_Digital_Edition_April_2019

www.images-magazine.com APRIL 2019 images 41 IS DECORATOR PROFILE “There were only a handful of people doing it. The company that I joined, Punchlines, was set up by two blokes who had trained at David Sharp in Nottingham, which was the centre of the textile world.“ Punchlines had a two-head Barudan machine that Lhea and the team could use for sampling. “I learned to embroider, so I understand what an embroidering machine does with garments. A lot of the digitisers nowadays, they don‘t. They just think, ‘Well, I‘ll trace that with stitching, that will be fine.‘ But as soon as you put it into a garment it pulls, it rips, it does things wrong... People who can run embroidery machines know what to do with those stitches.“ The launch of Wilcom‘s digitising software in the 1980s meant that by the mid-1990s, the market started to as retraining as a graphic designer. With the digitising of logos now available for a tenner a go, it‘s difficult to see how an experienced digitiser like Lhea can still find work and make a profit, but his solution is simple. “Some customers want something cheap, and that‘s fine. And other people want the quality side. I just hang on the side of the quality.“ He continues: “If they want to mass sell a load of garments at a market with logos on, that‘s fine. They send the logo off and 10 quid later they get it back from India or China or wherever. And it does the trick. “But if you want something a bit bespoke, something that you know is going to work on different garments... For example, I do work for racing cars and things like that. Now, they‘ve got leather seats inside, and those leather seats cost thousands. The last thing you want is a cheap piece of embroidery going through that leather seat and ripping the leather to bits. They need a high-quality logo first time, every time. With 31 years‘ experience, that‘s the side that I believe People who can run embroidery machines know what to do with those stitches Lhea has worked for a wide variety of high profile clients change. Lhea set about learning to digitise using Wilcom, so as well as being able to punch designs the old- fashioned way, he could now draw the artworks, digitise them and then embroider them. “At the time, there was only about 20-25 of us in England who could do it. There was Punchlines, David Sharp and a couple of others. None of the embroidery companies had their own digitising systems. They all outsourced. We were flooded with orders all the time.“ Plummeting prices Lhea stayed with the company for 22 years. “It was brilliant. But then the internet came alive, the world shrunk, and everybody started jumping on the bandwagon. Prices plummeted.“ Lhea left the company and set up his own business, Creative Needle, as well For Leah, it‘s all about quality and customer service: his work spans everything from Hollywood movies, global rock bands and Formula One racing teams to local businesses