Inside Look: Embroidery

8:30 AM Big City Sportswear 0 Comments

We specialize in many areas here at Big City, and one of our favorites is custom embroidery. The concept of embroidery is usually a pretty familiar one to most people, but the image that comes to mind typically involves a single hoop, a pattern, and stitching done painstakingly by hand. Not the case here! Our talented embroidery team is capable of conceptualizing and churning out hundreds of pieces in a short amount of time,  executed to perfrection. Want to know more about the embroidery process? Our latest installment of the "Inside Look" series will give you the 4-1-1:

Here at Big City, our embroidery department is substantial enough to tackle any size job. Unlike some other companies, we don't outsource our embroidery or digitizing; we execute it all in-house. We have 22 embroidery heads, all controlled by an advanced computer system, which means we can embroider lots of pieces with the same design at once, or several smaller jobs at the same time. From ball caps to work polos to tote bags, from simple logos to complex images, there are tons of options to choose from with embroidery.

Like the screen printing process, the embroidery process first starts with digital artwork (or the custom design for a given product). For embroidery, a logo or image always needs to be digitized. This process converts the image into one that carries instructions for the embroidery machine, and tells it how to correctly recreate the image in thread on the garment. Our embroidery team is able to take nearly any logo, photo or idea and turn it into a a true work of art (like these awesome car designs below -- which were done from scratch!). More complicated designs, like when an item is personalized or the image has a lot of detail, mean the item will have more stitches. The more stitches a design has, the higher the cost will be, since that means much more work for our team. Our ladies accomplish some truly incredible and intricate work!

Once the customer's artwork has been digitized and approved, the garment(s) are put into embroidery hoops, which hold the garment while it's being embroidered. Sometimes, the location of the embroidery is determined by where the garment is able to be hooped; if the spot on the item is too rigid, thick or otherwise too difficult for the hoop to reach, we may have to make some adjustments. Once the item is aligned correctly in the hoop, the machine is loaded with the correct colors of thread, and then the stitching can begin. The stitching is all controlled by machine, which means the way the machine is instructed to embroider has to be perfect. Because we can mass-produce the same design on multiple items at once, the actual embroidery for a large-scale order can be done in a short period of time. If you want to see some of the embroidery process in action, be sure to check out our Instagram for tons of videos, like this one!

There's a lot of work that goes into it, but those are the embroidery basics! If you have an idea for something you'd like embroidered, chances are that our team can create it. We take immense pride in our high quality of work, and we'd love to collaborate with you on an order that will exceed your expectations. Call or click to get your order going!