[amayausers.com] Re: Complex fill problem
- From: theboards@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- To: amayausers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 23:48:58 UT
This message was posted by Laughing Palm on AmayaUsers.com. PLEASE DO NOT REPLY
VIA EMAIL. Instead, respond to the thread on the WEBSITE by clicking here:
http://www.amayausers.com/boards/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/2/1344.html#000005
Hi Rhollid,
After looking at your picture, it appears that your concern stems from the fact
that either the fill stitching doesn't completely fill an element, or that the
material being stitched bunches together between rows of stitching.
The problem you are having is a function of quite a few factors, which will
vary based on the situation at hand - that's why you may be able to overcome it
one time, but not another time.
Here are the factors to consider:
The material being stitched
The density of the fill stitches
The underlay of the area in question
The stitch entry & exit points
Any overlapping stitch lines
The direction/angles of stitching
Your hooping procedures
The backing materials you are using
The stitch lengths being used
(and probably some other things that don't come to mind right away)
Interestingly enough, push/pull compensation isn't really going to solve your
problem here since it affects the stitching in a completely different
direction, and isn't really the cause of the bunching of material.
If you will watch carefully when this happens, what you will see is that in a
large fill area that is stitched with a standard tatami fill, one side may
start to get filled in first, then the stitching will move to another side of
that area and start filling it in going BACK towards the area that has already
been stitched. When this happens, it's not uncommon to see the material you
are working on being "pushed" along by the stitching...essentially stretched a
bit...sort of like riding ahead of a wave! At some point, you're going to have
some "pushed" material slightly raised up in front of your lines of stitches.
Now, when the direction of the stitching changes and comes back the other way,
the same thing will happen, and now you've got TWO sets of "pushed" material
meeting each other! Hence the "gap" you see in your fill area. And the denser
the stitching is, the more it pushes your material.
OK, so now that you hopefully realize that your base material is being pushed
around by your stitch lines, it's time to figure out how to avoid that
situation...
The first thing to consider is "How stretchy is my garment?" The more your
material stretches, the more you have to work at overcoming that movement of
material. To do that, the first thing most folks would tell you is to use
appropriate backing, and to hoop accordingly. For example, if your material is
a very thin knit, then you need to make darn sure your backing can compensate
for the lack of stability in the knit. Use a heavier piece of backing, or
something very stable (depending upon the circumstances) - you may even need to
use several pieces of tear-away, or even use a topping material (which is
common for looped terry and other materials with dimensionality).
Also, make sure you have hooped your material so that it doesn't have any
looseness in it (is "looseness" a real word?). If you hoop your materials
loosely, you're just asking for that type of "bunching" trouble since nothing
is going to stop it from moving in front of your stitch lines.
Now, we have to consider underlay...which is going to be a big, BIG factor in
something like this. It's usually better to have more underlay and less top
stitching - that helps to avoid "bullet-proof" embroidery. The underlay will
really help stabilize the material to your backing and not allow your garment
material to move as much. Play around with the density of your underlay, the
direction of your underlay, the number of underlays you are using, the stitch
lengths of your underlay, and the direction/order in which your underlays are
stitched...all of these factors are important to how well your material will
behave! And also how well your final stitching will look.
It's usually best to have your underlays at contrasting angles to your top
stitching. That allows the thread to lay on TOP of the underlay stitches
instead of falling between the lines of underlay thread. I'm not sure I'm very
clear here, so let me give you an example:
I have a circle to fill in. (Think of a round clock face.)
Let's say that my stitch angle for my top fill is going to be straight up and
down (90-degrees).
I want the top tatami fill stitching to go left to right, which means that it
will start at the 9 o'clock position, and end up finishing at the 3 o'clock
position of the circle. These start and end positions are important since I
don't want my stitching to end up in the middle of the circle and end up
"pushing" material towards the center.
My underlay is most likely going to be one of two types. Either a single
underlay that stitches at a horizontal angle (0-degrees) so that it's exactly
90-degrees opposite my fill stitching), or a double underlay that has the first
underlay stitch angle at 45-degrees, and the second underlay at 135-degrees
(notice that it's 90-degrees opposite the first underlay), which would allow my
top stitching to sit nicely atop the underlay(s).
If you had your underlay at 90-degrees, and you top stitched at 90-degrees,
your fill stitches would fall right alongside the underlay, and the underlay
would not work very well - not to mention that the stitching would probably
look ugly and uneven.
Be careful not to use underlay stitches that are too short, since you want your
top stitches to have plenty of thread to lay on top of! Also, be careful not
to make your underlays too dense, otherwise you will have the same problem with
your underlays that you are having with your top stitching - that 'bunching"
issue.
Also, it's usually best to have all of your stitching (top stitches AND
underlays) go straight across a fill area without having to back-track to meet
a previously stitched fill area. It helps flatten your material and is usually
critical in digitizing for caps (which is almost always done in a
BOTTOM-UP/CENTER-OUT method to avoid bunching).
This is why entry and exit points for both underlay and fills is so important
to keep in mind when digitizing. If you use your software's automatic fill
capability, be aware of how it stitches out, and if you can't get it to do it
like you want (this is usually the case with the underlays), then try creating
more than one of the same element, and "manually" use that method to create an
underlay that works like you want.
One item you apparently learned about is the overlap feature of a fill. This
is basically a question that asks you: "How many lines of stitches do you want
to overlap when a fill area has to come back towards a previously filled
section of that same area?" This helps to cover up any small bunched sections
that may have occurred because of material movement. If you have properly
accounted for the factors I have already covered, then this number should
typically be quite small...1 or 2 is generally sufficient. If you have lines
of stitches that get stitched over others, sometimes you can really notice it
in the final product because you now have 2 layers of stitches, which will look
a bit raised up, so be careful with this feature.
I hope this info helps. If not, don't worry...just delete it! LOL
Best,
Jim
===========================================================
The AmayaUsers Mailing List
Website: http://www.amayausers.com
Discussion Board: http://www.amayausers.com/boards
Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://www.amayausers.com/list
===========================================================
Other related posts:
