Before you send away boxes full of clothing to be embroidered, whether it’s for band merchandise or school uniform, you’ll be curious as to how mass embroidery is carried out. Most people are under the impression that computer software can carry out the whole process, but they are mistaken.

A design must first be digitised before it can be embroidered by a sewing machine. This means that the design needs to be scanned in and changed into a certain format, involving the use of CAD and CAM technology (Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Manufacture, respectively). Often the digitising process produces images that are ‘messed up’ or that look very different to the original, because the number of pixels in the scanned image and the number on the computer screen are different. Therefore, before the design can be embroidered onto the fabric a human must oversee the computers to check that they are digitising the images correctly. Even though much of the process uses machinery, it is absolutely essential for this monitoring from humans, or there could be so many poorly digitised designs embroidered onto fabric and sent out to very unhappy customers.

After the checks to ensure the digitising went well are carried out the digitised design can be transferred to a machine ready to be sewn onto the fabric. Any designs that have been warped during digitising will need to be processed by hand to be returned to their original state. Next for the sewing machine comes the process of reading the image and the pattern that was formulated from it. The way these patterns are put together sometimes means that the design doesn’t look anything like it should do until it’s finished, due to the layers of thread and different shaped and colours that need to coincide. Because the pattern was derived from the original image you can rest assured that it looks perfect at the end.

Fabric, colours and designs always vary, which means that occasionally a human will need to intervene in the process to change needles and threadsThis does slow down the embroidery process a little, meaning that most designs take between 24 and 48 hours to complete to the stage that they are ready to be sent back to the customer. Once one image has been digitised it doesn’t need to go through the process again because it will have been stored onto the computer and the pattern onto the sewing machine so it can be used again. In fact, processing 100 baseball caps with one logo would take less time than processing 20 each with a different one.

So there we have it, the processes involved in embroidering clothing singularly, in batches or for mass production using computer technology. Since this technology has been developed the processing time for embroidered clothing has more than halved and the industry has begun to boom.