Images Digital Edition DEC 2018

KB TIPS & TECHNIQUES www.images-magazine.com 52 images DECEMBER 2018 will help you to profit from a wide range of new products. Confounding construction The outside of bags is often festooned with pockets, zippers, piping, thick seams and fittings while the insides sport linings, pouches and clasps, sometimes behind the only clear areas on the outer shell, while tougher tool B ags vary greatly in terms of construction – from open-sided totes to the multi-pocketed surfaces of tech bags – and ease of decoration. But whatever the style, by learning how to decorate bags you‘ll be able to bring new add-on sales potential to any apparel programme. The following tips address the two most common bag decorating challenges and Erich Campbell shares his top tips for embellishing those difficult- to-decorate bags It‘s in bags may even have large plastic or metal reinforcements. These design constraints can make hooping and stitching difficult or, on occasion, well nigh impossible. The more features your bag has, the more likely you’ll fight with finding a place to securely hoop it, and even when you find a clear pocket, it may be too small for your cylinder arm. Here’s how to tackle these challenges: This bag is the sort of standard bag you‘ll often be asked to decorate. Though the decoration area looks large, much of it is inaccessible to the embroidery machine. Even so, this is a fairly easy bag to decorate because the back of the embroidery can be hidden in the slim front pocket. The wide zipper opening allows the cylinder arm of the machine a good amount of travel in the pocket and it is deep enough to fit a standard hoop for logos a bit over 5“ wide, if desired. [Image courtesy of Celeste Schwartz] This small and simple zipped bag is light on features, but big on embroidery area. With a pocket running the entirety of the bag and no excess structure or pockets in the way, this bag can take a fairly large logo. Admittedly, these no- frills bags are not expensive so you may find that the decoration costs more than the blank. While not necessarily the best selection for anyone who wants a feature- rich bag, this spartan bag perfectly fulfilled the brief for a convenient, prominently-logoed, promotional carry- all for gym programme info during a local fitness challenge It may not be as textured as heavy canvas bags, but even this bag is textured enough to cause stair-stepping and distortion in small lettering and lines. As you can see in the detail of the Challenge logo though, small lettering and outlines can be cleanly executed with the use of the proper needles and structural underlay The classic backpack seen here is everything we want a decoratable bag to be: big, open pocket with an accessible embroidery area and very few roadblocks to hooping. Sadly, this is not the case with many bags