ImagesMagUK_December_2020

stabiliser and by hooping the garment firmly, but they can’t be eliminated. Pull distortion This happens in every stitch: as the stitch is formed and pulls tight, it slightly shortens along its length and draws tight the material inside, pulling in a bit like a drawstring. Simply put, this means that a column of satin stitches will be more narrowly stitched than it appears on screen and the edges of a fill stitch along the stitch angle will draw in slightly. When borders on filled objects draw away from each other and leave gaps, or letters look less bold than expected, it’s pull distortion that’s to blame. Push distortion This happens when stitches that are laid close together side by side push each other (and their base fabrics) apart in order to lay in a single layer. Imagine someone trying to stack round pencils on a flat surface – they will settle and roll off each other, expanding the stack towards the long sides of the pencils until they lay in a uniform layer, one pencil thick. In a satin stitch, push distortion will cause the stitches to ‘push’ out toward the ends of the stitch column, meaning that if you create a vertical column of satin stitches in your software, like a sans- serif uppercase ‘i’, the embroidered ‘i’ will be slightly taller than the one on your screen. You have to understand how stitches distort when running in order to know how much an object’s shape needs to be changed so as to counteract the distortion. As you can see here, the gap measured doesn’t appear in the finished piece. That’s due to compensation. Measuring designs and comparing to samples can help you figure out the correlation O ne complaint unites nearly everyone new to the world of embroidery digitising: “But it looked perfect on the screen!” It’s a common refrain when outlines don’t register, columns of satin stitch are too thin, repeated lines of straight stitches are too thick, circles start to look like ovals, squares look like rhombuses, and the baselines and tops of lettering become jaggedly staggered. Distortion Embroidery will always distort. Before I discuss why, or explain the processes and inputs that alter and mitigate that distortion, you have to accept that the shapes you create in your embroidery software will change during the process of stitching. Just accepting this can be a difficult hurdle to clear for some who are still in the early days of their embroidery careers. Those with training in print can be the most frustrated, as although traditional printers may have prepared for some distortion in their work, the sheer amount of difference between what one creates in embroidery software and the results on the embroidery machine can surprise even an experienced designer if they have never worked in the medium. The tug of war Two factors account for almost all of the alteration of shapes one sees in a design: pull distortion and push distortion. Both of these forces can be mitigated somewhat through the use of proper, dimensionally stable backing or www.images-magazine.com DECEMBER 2020 images 67 KB TIPS & TECHNIQUES Pulling in the right direction Erich Campbell provides the answer to the question most often asked by digitising newbies: “Why doesn’t my embroidery look like it does on the screen?”