The surviving examples of ancient embroidered products, which are now displayed in national museums, is enough justification that people have been into embroidery for decades. Embroidery is the art of decorating a plain fabric or other materials using needle and thread. During the early centuries, the process of creating design out of combined stitches was done by hands. But when industrial revolution came, machine embroidery was introduced then. Machine embroidery is a much improved process of stitching designs on textiles. It is basically categorized into two types – the free-motion machine embroidery and the computerized machine embroidery. On this post, DigitPlace will discuss to you how free-motion embroidery and computerized embroidery differs in terms of stitching a design.
In free-motion machine embroidery, you don’t need an expensive sewing machine in order to create a custom embroidered the design. The basic zigzag sewing machine that is primarily used for tailoring, coupled with a backing plate and an embroidery hoop, is enough for embroiderers to form artistic design on base material. Embroiderers too do not need any pattern in order to produce an embroidered design. They can design anything they wish and change the thread color whenever they want. The common stitch type being used in free-motion embroidery is running stitch. But they can also create a filled-in effect by sewing several parallel rows of straight stitching and utilizing the machine’s zigzag stitch to create thicker lines within a design or a border. Another good thing about free-motion embroidery is the designs are uniquely created.
Meanwhile in computerized machine embroidery, embroiders use a computer-controlled machine for embroidery. The operator for computerized machine embroidery no longer need an embroidery hoop because the equipment itself already comes with a hooping or framing system that will keep the framed area taut under the sewing needle. Aside from using more advanced equipment, this type of machine embroidery process requires the operator produce a design that comes in stitch format. Thus, the expertise of an embroidery digitizer is very important. And if there are things that make computerized embroidery better than free-motion embroidery, the operator can create intricate designs in a faster turnaround time. Computer-controlled embroidery machine usually consists of 20 or more heads and each head has 15 or more needles thus, a single head can produce several special fabric effects concurrently. Not to mention the availability of pre-programmed digital embroidery pattern that enables the embroiderer to reproduce the same design on different fabric anytime he/she wants.
*Photo Source: Images are taken using Google Image Search