Appliqué the Professional Way

Creative use of appliqué can increase margins, save stitches and time, and deliver spectacular results.
August 01, 2006

Appliqué is a process that replaces fill stitches with fabric. This reduces overall stitch counts and allows the creation of cost-effective, full-size graphics with interesting textures and effects that would be impossible to create with direct embroidery alone.

Commercial embroiderers have many opportunities to add appliqué to the methods in which they offer personalization services to their customers.

Appliqué is called for in all team sports, whether it is for a university, high school, local or professional sports team. Appliqués in whimsical designs often decorate children's wear and women's wear as well as home décor. The good news is that appliqué is now easier than ever.

Appliqué has always been a three-step process in machine embroidery:

Step One is a placement line, which is a running stitch line that sews on your garment to tell you exactly where the appliqué is to be placed. The machine is programmed to stop at this point to allow you to place the appliqué on the placement line.

Step Two is the tack down stitch that is run just on the inside of the appliqué to hold it in position. The tack down can be a running stitch or a zigzag.

Step Three is the final border stitch. This can be a zigzag, satin or a decorative stitch.

The excitement is in the new materials and commercially cut designs that are now available to the embroiderer.

Tackle twill fabrics have long been the standard for names of sports teams and player's names on uniforms. These sports appliqués are often two-color designs such as the one seen Figure 1. (It is Poly-TWILL, Stahls' trademark 100% polyester twill appliqué material with thermal adhesive backing.)

When you order these types of appliqué, you receive the two-color, pre-cut pieces of tackle twill and a sew disk that contains the machine embroidery file to perform the three steps for each of the two colors of appliqué. The disk also contains the digitized word Hockey that is embroidered over the appliqué. What's new is that you can now order your appliqué in pressure-sensitive twill so you no longer have to use spray adhesive to hold the design to the garment while the tack down line is being sewn.

Kiss-cut designs are another exciting advancement in appliqué because they can reduce the time required to produce multicolored appliqué designs by 40%. In a kiss-cut design kit, the two or three colors arrive with each of the separate colors pre-spaced and laminated together as seen in Figure 2.

The time is saved in that you only have to stop the machine once to place the total appliqué. The embroidery machine then proceeds from one color change to the next without having to stop for additional appliqué placement. Speed isn't the only advantage of kiss-cut designs — they have a much more professional look and since they do not require manual layout, there are no more missing pieces. Kiss-cut designs do cost more, but the cost difference should be more than covered by the reduction in application time.Figure 3 shows another innovative new concept — kiss-cut chenille fabric used to add texture to this spirit design by Dalco. The background is available in either a scrim felt fabric, often used on lettermen's jackets, or in twill, which is used on sweat shirt type garments.

The commercial appliqué companies also offer split-front designs so that you can give your sports team customers the professional sports images they are looking for. Even though it takes a little more planning to do a split-front application, there are many types of split-front to choose from and all have easy-to-follow instructions to ensure perfect placement.

The choices of fabrics are now incredible and should be considered when deciding where to use appliqué in your designs. Besides tackle twill, you can find prints, metallic, glitter, chenille and fabrics that mimic embroidery stitches or textures that look like basketballs and footballs. All of these fabrics will allow you to create large fill areas that will greatly reduce the number of stitches in your designs.

When your creative juices are flowing, any fabric can be used in your appliqués.

Fake fur makes great Teddy bears or hair. Lamé fabrics can be fantastic as a background for fish. The possibilities are endless. You can cut these fabric pieces yourself or find a professional appliqué cutter who will let you supply your own materials.

adhesive choiceS

The type of finish that is on the back of the appliqué fabric will make a difference in how you apply it to the garment. Some appliqué fabrics come with an integral heat seal backing. You will need an appliqué iron to use this type of fabric. This is a small iron on a long handle that allows you to apply heat to the appliqué while the garment is in the hoop on the embroidery machine.

Other fabrics have a pressure-sensitive backing that you simply press in place and don't require heat. It's more expensive than other backings, but you should weigh that against time saved in application. If the fabric you are using does not have one of these adhesive backings ,apply a spray adhesive before you lay the appliqué on the garment.

Regardless of the finish on the back of your fabric, I recommend you use a heat press on each completed appliquéd garment to ensure proper bonding.

Small can be beautiful

Designs don't always have to be large to benefit from the use of appliqués. You can buy small, pre-cut appliqué shapes from suppliers and add embroidery to create commercial designs such as the security company logos shown in Figure 4.Though this design is not complex, a lot of stitches are saved in the fill of that shield by the use of the appliqué.

When saving stitches is the prime consideration for using appliqué you might want to seriously consider the type of final border that you will use to sew your design to the garment. A satin stitch border is the most attractive, but a zigzag border can save up to 75% of the stitches used to finish the appliqué. If there is any chance that the fabric you have chosen for your appliqué could fray or ravel after washing, you will want to use the satin stitch border.

For special effects, use an E-stitch border, which is especially nice on non-raveling fabrics such as felt or poly-fleece.PRICING CONCERNS

Embroiderers often ask me how to price their appliqué work. It shouldn't be too difficult to compute once you have determined the cost of the appliqué components. You should mark up the cost of the appliqué the same percentage that you have marked up the garment.

In terms of labor, it should take about a minute each time the machine stops for you to add additional pieces of appliqué. Multiply the number of times the machine stops by the normal number of stitches you sew per minute. For instance, if you stop the machine twice for a two-color design and normally sew 650 stitches per minute, you would add 1,300 stitches to the actual stitch count of the design. Compute your embroidery charge based on this total. Add that to the price for the appliqué and garment, and you have the price that you should charge your customer.

If you compare the cost of filling the entire design with stitches to the cost of the same design made using appliqué, you will be surprised at how much money you save yourself and your customer by providing this type of service.

As your business grows in this specialized area of embroidery, nothing would be finer than owning your own appliqué cutting equipment. Appliqué cutters come in several styles and sizes, and come complete with computer programs that will generate your sew disk at the same time as the appliqué is designed, providing you with the placement line, tack down line and choices of finishing borders.