Fixing Errors Can Repair Your Profit Margin

Learn how to correct sewing errors without destroying stock and eating up your margins.
May 1, 2008

Use tearaway backing when sewing a new color thread over a sewn design.

By Steven Batts

In baseball, one of my favorite positions is the closer. He's the pitcher who comes in when there is trouble, throws a few balls, strikes a guy out and finishes the game as a hero. In the stat book he gets what's called a "save." That's what I like to do in embroidery. Sure, anyone can make a nice embroidered shirt, but how many can take one that is on the verge of being lost to the scrap pile and turn it into a finished product?

Now, I don't go looking for opportunities to fix erroneous embroidery, but that is the attitude I develop when I go to correct a design that has been sewn wrong. I like the challenge of repairing it. Maybe it is because I have really messed up some things and have lots of practice.

Many embroideries that go wrong are easily fixed, but some are more difficult. You may not need to employ all the suggestions here. Some are for those bottom-of-the-ninth, bases-loaded, game-on-the-line situations — those where you have to salvage the piece at all costs. Other times, the best solution is to toss that piece and start on another one.

No matter what the repair, most involve removing stitches. The first rule of stitch removal is to work from the back of the garment. You are less likely to damage the garment picking at the stitches from the back, as this is where the bobbin thread is, which is what we are actually trying to clip. Once it is cut, the top stitching will pull out easily. Now, if you clip some of the top thread along the way, it is no big deal. It is coming out anyway.

The second rule of stitch removal is to leave the item in the hoop, if possible. This keeps the fabric nice and taut while you work on it. Most importantly, it keeps the garment lined up for re-sewing. After all, there is a reason you had to remove these stitches in the first place.

Several tools are available for stitch removal. Be sure to stock a good pair of snips, a seam ripper and maybe an X-ACTO knife. Even a regular disposable razor can be useful to shave away the bobbin thread, particularly on large fill areas. However, nothing beats Peggy's Stitch Eraser, which is available virtually anywhere you buy embroidery supplies. Although it is not much more than a modified mustache trimmer, the special blade and the power of an electric motor can save you hours of time when removing stitches.

HOLEY FABRIC, BATMAN
Seeing a hole in the garment you are embroidering can really freak you out. Whether it is from a broken needle, a birdnest or the result of removing stitches, nothing says "there's another shirt for the scrap pile" faster than a hole. But depending on how badly you need to salvage the garment, virtually any hole can be repaired.

Often, all that is necessary to repair a hole is to slide a piece of cutaway backing underneath the hoop, back the design up and sew back over the hole. You may want to spray the cutaway and stick it to the affected area to make it hold while it is being mended.

For more severe situations, you will have to actually mend the hole first before embroidering back over it. You can mend it with just a couple of hand-sewn stitches or with some iron-on products from a fabric store. Then embroider over the area. The embroidery will hide most of the problems.

In the most extreme situations, you can cover the hole with a fill background. Depending on where the hole falls in relationship to the design, this may not even be very noticeable, especially if the color of the thread in the fill matches the garment.

WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
Whether you sew the wrong color, misspell a word or sew the wrong design entirely, there are really only two options when it comes to repairing these types of mistakes: Take it out or cover it up. Taking out stitches doesn't mean you necessarily have to remove the whole design and start over. Sometimes that is the easiest approach, but in other cases, it is smarter to remove just the incorrect part of the design, correct the problem (i.e., spell the word correctly), and just redo that section.

Sometimes the best and/or only solution is to simply cover up the mistake. The problem with covering up embroidery with embroidery, besides having a gazillion stitches in a small area, is the stitching underneath bleeding through the stitches on top. This is especially a problem when covering up a wrong-color sew with the proper color.

In these cases, it is best to lay down a piece of water-soluble topping or even a piece of tearaway backing over the area before you resew it. This will keep the part underneath from bleeding through to the top. Water-soluble topping works well, but if the item is going to be washed, there could be concerns that the bleed through will appear later on. In these cases, a layer of tearaway backing works better.

If you are sewing over a design with the same one — this time using the correct color thread — you may want to scale the design up slightly (1% to 2%). This ensures that none of the old stitches will peek through the new embroidery.

Sewing over a design works well with big areas. Small open areas, such as letters, require a different approach. In these cases, a better solution is to cover those areas with a solid background of stitches. You may or may not need the topping or backing to do this.

If you are just going over old lettering, a solid fill at a 45-degree angle should cover it fine with no bleed through. You can even make the background the same color as the garment to make it less conspicuous.

GET IT STRAIGHT
Perhaps the hardest error to fix is realigning something once it has been unhooped. You have so many factors to deal with: finding the right stitch on the machine, re-hooping the item straight and aligning the machine with the existing part of the design.

One thing I do to help find the right stitch is to write the stitch number where the problem was first noticed. I write that number on the backing of the piece that needs to be repaired. This isn't always feasible because the problem sometimes isn't noticed until later. If you don't know where it is in the design, you can go back to your software to get an idea. That will get you in the ball park, within 100 stitches or so. Another technique is to simply sew the design on a piece of backing until it gets to the spot where the correction needs to be made.

Finding what stitch to go to is the easy part. Framing it straight is much more difficult. Getting the machine lined up with the newly framed piece can be very tricky as well.

To help frame it straight in relation to the existing part of the design, try holding or taping a straight edge across the frame for a better point of reference while framing. For round hoops, Hoopmaster Inc. (Germantown, Wis.) makes a device called the Pocket Alignment Guide. It is basically a clear plastic piece with a grid printed on it that fits into your hoop. This can help tremendously in trying to get something perfectly straight.

Once you get the item on the machine, you have to align the machine with the existing design. The best way to do this is to put the needle down close to the fabric, then trace forward and backward through the design stitch by stitch and nudge the frame one way or the other until you are comfortable it is aligned properly.

Sometimes, while you are trying to align the machine to resew a mistake, you will discover that the item wasn't framed perfectly straight the first time. It may be off by a degree or so. Rather than reframing to get it straighter, sometimes it is easier to simply rotate the design in the machine by one or two degrees. Then start the alignment process again by tracing through the design. Yes, it is very tedious, but eventually you get there. Patience is the key.

Regardless of the mishap, don't let it beat you. Take it as a challenge and be the closer. Come in, strike it out and win the game. When you get it fixed and it looks right, you may feel as if you just won the World Series.

Steven Batts, a consultant with 15 years experience in the embroidery industry, owns Righteous Threads, Greensboro, N.C., which offers digitizing, embroidery and machine maintenance services. Steven regularly leads seminars at ISS shows and is an industry speaker and consultant. For more information or to comment on this article, e-mail Steven at rthreads@bellsouth.net.

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