Embroidering on wearable garments is the most common type of embroidery services we provide. The most common garment type for embroidery is polo (or golf) shirts, but we can embroider on pretty much anything that we can hoop into our machines. Common areas for placing the design on a garment are:

• Left/Right chest, without pocket. Left chest is the most common placement for the embroidery design. Visual guidelines for embroidery design placement are: vertically, at the midpoint between end of the collar and beginning of the sleeve; horizontally, 5¼in down from the collar.
  Right chest is less common area (about 10% of that for the left chest), and the placement guidelines are exactly the same, only, of course, mirrored vertically.
• Left/Right chest, with pocket. Pocket changes placement of the logo. Visually, the logo must appear centered 1/4 to 1/2 inches above the pocket regardless of where the pocket itself is placed on a garment.
  NOTE: it is not advisable to embroider on the pocket itself, because the embroidery machine will pierce through both plies of the pocket, sawing it together.
• Middle chest - is a common design placement for zip-less and button-less sweaters, hoodies, pullovers and jackets.
• Left/Right sleeve. Coming from military, navy, and police uniforms with patches, embroidery on the sleeves is rapidly becoming very trendy. A lot of our customers want their logos embroidered particularly on the sleeve. The placement of the embroidery design is different for short sleeves vs. long sleeves. For short sleeves, the design is placed right above the sleeve's seem, while for the long sleeve, it is placed at about 1/4 length of the sleeve from the top. Sometimes higher, if it is known that the sleeve will be rolled up a lot.
• Back. Jackets of all sorts are the most common items to have embroidery on the back. Usually, the jackets themselves are expensive, and so is the embroidery that goes on them. Large visible area is perfect for large embroidery designs (30,000 and up stitches), which in turn, cost more to embroider.

Embroidering on your garments

Although our clothing suppliers are the best in the industry and our prices are very competitive, we will gladly provide you with embroidery services on your own garments.

There are few things, however, that you must remember when bringing us your garment.

• Used garments - are possible to embroider, but we CANNOT GUARATEE THE RESULTS. Washed fabric is less stable and its pull (how it reacts to the stitching) is different from the brand new fabric.
• Overly stretchy fabrics - like the ones containing high percentage of lycra material - are almost impossible to embroider. The released (after clamping) facric will distort the image and it will look awful.
• Garments with lining - this especially concerns jackets - have to have a way to get between the lining and the shell. Otherwise, the embroidery needle with pierce both the shell and the lining, stitching them together.

Embroidered hats are very popular form of visual advertising. Vast majority (about 80%) of embroidered headwear are baseball caps, with toques, tubes and other specialty headwear being an occasional item.

• 6-panel caps - are the most popular embroidered headwear. They can be either structured - with 2 front panels reinforces with stiff backing material, or unstructured - without the reinforcement. The design can be placed a) on cap's front, b) on cap's back (around opening or on the back panel for fitted caps), or c) on either side of the cap. Some specialty caps are also design to have embroidery design to be done on the bill itself.
  
  6-panel caps have a seam right in the middle of the front. In vast majority of cases, your design will be embroidered right over it. Most of the time the seam is of no concern, but for designs with fine lines some distortion of the image is to be expected.
• 5-panel mesh caps - also known as "trucker hat", this hat has a large front panel, usually white. Although visual appeal of the hat is somewhat less trendy than that of a 6-panel cap, it is easier to embroider, plus also allows for other types of personalization, such as image heat-transfer (which we also do!) that could be cheaper alternative to embroidery.
• Toques, etc - toques, beanie hats and other tubular headwear is a modern fashion trend, especially in British Columbia, where skiing is an extremely popular sport and leasure time.
  
  Some toques have flaps, some not. There are also toques with bills. Regardless of this, toques are embroidered using regular tubular hooping mechanism, just like the t-shirts, etc. The only difference is that we put the toque into the machine upside down, so we have to sew the design upside down, too. Plus, for better results, we put a thin sheet of wash-away plastic that prevents the stitches from "sinking" into the thick material of the toque. The most common design size on the toque is 4"x2", horizontal.

Patches are special kind of embroidery, usually done on a flat piece of twill fabric with special backing material. Embroidering patches is different from embroidering garments themselves in the way the edge is created and trimmed and by what kind of backing material is used. There are two types of edges - dye-cut and merrowed. As well, patches differ by the types of backing materials used - sew-on patches and iron-on patches.

• Dye-cut Patches - are created by embroidering the design on the twill fabric, and then creating the border using the embroidery machine with special setting for the border, usually wider and thicker line than the regular stitching. After that, the patch is being cut from the twill fabric around the border using scissors.
• Merrowed Patches - are created the same way the dye-cut pathces are, but the border is usually just outlined by the thin running stitch. After the patch is cut from the fabric, a special merrowing machine is used to create the border. Merrowing machine is a kind on overlock sewing machine, that sews around the edge of the fabric.