ImagesMagUK_Digital_Edition_Feb18

www.images-magazine.com FEBRUARY 2018 images 29 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Make patch caps a promotional powerhouse for your customers DTG: With a look comparable to screen printing from a digital source and the ability to use dark substrates on some printers, DTG is versatile. Pros: Less art prep, fine detail and full colour on darks. Cons: If you don’t have DTG, it’s costly kit, and not suited to classic polyester patch material. DTG is flat like sublimation, but some customers think of the look as ‘cheap’, unless they like the punk rock, screen printed, patch aesthetic. Patch cap production in three steps Procure or produce your patches: Clean-edged patches can be made with an embroidery machine alone, using water-soluble stabilisers, hot-knife cutting or stitching on plastic film, but if you want wovens, classic overlocked edges or have large quantities and lead time, you might want to use a contractor. No matter how you make your patches, check the intended cap’s crown to get the proper size and fit for the small, available vertical space before creating or contracting your emblems. Plotting the stitch-down plan Create a file to attach patches like appliqué: 1 Scan your finished patch on a flat-bed scanner 2 Import that scan into your digitising software, checking for correct scale 3 Plot a run stitch for placement more than 0.4mm inside the patch’s edge, stopping at the bottom of the design so that the cap is pushed out from under the machine’s head at the end of the placement run 4 Add your chosen combination of tack-down and/or cover stitch for the final border as described in the next section, using a new colour. Make sure your machine or file indicates a full stop before this step If you have ordered classic, overlocked edge patches, make sure you allow for some variation: scan a representative sample and place the initial stitch further under the edge. Step 1: For this patch, Tom Farr, of Buzzards Bay Embroidery, chose to underlay and flatten the cap underneath the entire area where the patch would be applied; that also served as an easy guide for placement Step 2: With some light spray-adhesive, you place your patch, like this sublimated canvas example, over the placement lines from your first step Step 3: Once the patch is tacked down, full satin-stitch edge coverage is applied. Technically, this is more an appliqué design than a patch, but the image in the central material is already printed before you start. This method can work for almost any patch 1 2 3 [Above] In this close-up of the woven cap, you get a good feeling for the fine detail and the texture; you’ll see that the hand-edging is a little off-centre and that the attachment stitching consists of a single line of straight stitches in the colour of the patch background. This is the simplest, most classic way to attach a pre-made patch [Image courtesy of Burly Vinson, Snappiesco.com] This inventive custom hat sports a woven patch simply stitched to the crown with a straight-stitch. You can see that the woven texture, though it’s not the depth of full embroidery, does have a distinct look and, as seen in the tiny lettering at the left and right, woven patches can maintain very fine details