Embroidery Basics Articles

10/28/2016 The Pros & Cons of Resizing Designs Embroidery Article
you can add underlay to the rest of the sections.
Those simple changes should make this uncomplicated design stitch­able at double the
size. It’s still not a jacket back size, though, so if we triple the size of the design, what then?
The problems are the same, just in a bigger proportion.
All of the columns become too wide at the tripled
size. They can be changed to a fill, but now they
need more underlay than did the columns on the
original design. Again, with the click of a button, I
added an edge walk for the primary underlay and
an additional center walk for the secondary
underlay.
Since the problem was universal, I didn’t have to
change the properties of each section, but could
choose the entire design and change them only
once.
Double The Size
You’d think this might be a very stitch intensive
design at this size, but not so. It came out to 28,240 total stitches, on the low size of jacket back sized designs.
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Columns and fills are pretty easy to deal with when enlarging designs. Much more dif ficult
are the designs that have a running stitch outline. What seems accurate at a small size is
not necessarily so when enlarged. Any discrepancies in the outline become bigger and
bigger as the size goes up. The design on the right, for instance, is a small design, cute at
the size it is, but lacking in the detail that you would want if you were to enlarge it
significantly.
Compare the size of the running stitch outline to the size of a column. It’ s apparent that
there is far less leeway in portraying accuracy . However, if you do choose to enlarge a
simple design like this one, and there are areas of the fill that need adjustment, you need
a software program that allows you to move the edges of the outline.
The push/pull factor is huge when it comes to resizing designs. Experience will tell you
that the larger the design, the more compensation that will be needed for fill patterns,
simply because they are larger . Experience is the key! It takes time to become proficient in using the features in your editing
software.
Let’s go the other direction. Using the same two designs, let’ s take a look at what
happens when we go smaller . The original design of the child was just over four inches
tall. Reducing it to 50 percent of that size works great. The only noticeable dif ferences are
in the compacting of the hair and the fill stitches seem a bit long. Remember , though, that
we are looking at screen­generated pictures, and the look is not totally accurate. While they
are a good judge of what will work and not work, an embroiderer really has to stitch out the
design to test its accuracy .
Now let’s go back to that crown. The crown is a dif ferent story because of the columns. The
columns that finish of f the edges of the design work great at the original size, but when
reduced are too narrow for easy stitching, and will result in thread breaks.
The columns, before adjustment, were at .04 inches, much too small to stitch. T o get them back to a workable size, I increased the
column width 170 percent. The whole thing seems a little over­run by black to me.
https://www.embroiderydesigns.com/emb_learning/article/572/the­pros­­cons­of­resizing­designs.aspx
Let’s try changing the color and see what that
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