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Embroidery Q&A

Why would I choose embroidery?

Embroidered garments are usually preceived as more luxurious and durable than other forms of garment decorating. Additionally, in smaller quantities, embroidered garments are often less expensive to produce and take less time to obtain. Finally, many people simply prefer embroidery to other decorating options because of its rich, embossed look and feel.

Is there an order minimum?
That's one of our great advantages. For many items there is no minimum! For some items the minimum can be as low as 6 or 12 items. And you don't pay a premium to order just one or two garments, you get the same price regardless of the quantity.

How long does it take to get embroidered garments?
Embroidery orders normally take 2-3 weeks (10-15 business days), depending upon the garment selection and availability, and whether your logo has been previously digitized or not.

Suppose I need it faster than the normal embroidery order?
Call or email us! We'll work out what is, and isn't possible for what you need and let you know just how much it will cost.

How much does the embroidery cost?
You don't pay premiums for small quantities with us! That is a real benefit because you don't have to batch requests, or wait to order. You can order as you need items. All the garments in the business section are priced including embroidery (that is the garment price includes a standard embroidery charge for most common designs.) The business section is a password protected registered customer area. If you are interested in the business section, please use our New Customer Form or just email or call us.

There can be additional cost depending upon the complexity of your design or logo. Certain applications of embroidery, such as a full back, may also require additional charges. If you've never had your design digitized, there will be a digitizing charge based upon the size, number of stitches and complexity of your design. Simply email or fax your design to us and we'll give you a custom estimate of the cost to digitize and the stitch count for decoration costs.

To what does digitizing my design refer?
Digitizing is a a one-time charge for programming your design into a standard embroidery machine language that most embroidery machines can read and use to reproduce your design on a garment. Our digitizing is industry standard and can be used over in the future as long as you do not change your design. The digitized program instructs the embroidery equipment on the thread color, type, size and location of the stitch on the garment. In some special cases it can be necessary to know the garment and fabric prior to digitizing in order to insure the optimum result. Digitizing your design is a very important step in achieving a high-quality finished product. Digitizing a design is not simply conversion from a picture to a digital format but is a specialized graphic design process. Many logos have elements (such as very fine lines, or highly detailed images) that cannot be fully represented in an embroidered image. The digitizing process includes graphically determining how to best represent the logo in an embroidered form that works well in the embroidery process while still maintaining the integrity of the logo design. That's one of the reasons that we offer two different levels of digitizing -- Quality Digitizing and Expert Digitizing. For many, Quality Digitizing is more than adequate, but if your logo is especially complicated, or has elements that require modification to reproduce, we may suggest using our Expert Digitizing services and explain to you why you should do so.

How much does digitizing cost?
As we've said, it is based upon the stitch count, size and complexity of your logo or design. Email or fax your design to us and we'll give you a custom estimate of the cost to digitize and the stitch count for decoration costs.

What about monogramming a garment?
A variety of standard fonts are available for lettering using simple text and punctuation. Our retail priced garments include monogramming for 2 lines up to one inch high in the price. Our business customers who wish to embroider a logo and also add a monogram to a garment can do so for an additional charge.

What kind of artwork do I provide for embroidery?

Artwork Information:

You can provide your logo or design artwork in a variety of ways from a printed image, even a sketch to a ready-to-use digitized embroidery file. The difference is how much it will cost and how long it will take to be ready to produce your garments. Sketched artwork takes the longest and is the most expensive method while a digitzed embroidery file can be used immediately. Most of the time artwork is provided in a computer file format as either Finished Artwork, or Rough Artwork, or in a Printed Format. If you don't have design, call us, we can design it for you.

Finished Artwork Types:

• Encapsulated Postscript (.eps)
• ADOBE Illustrator (.ai)
• CorelDRAW (.cdr)
• Macromedia Freehand (.fh#)

Rough Artwork Types:

• ADOBE Acrobat (.pdf)
• ADOBE Photoshop (.psd)
• Graphics Interchange Format (.gif)
• Joint Photgraphics Experts Group (.jpeg)
• Tagged Image File Format (.tif)
• Windows Bitmap (.bmp)

Printed Format Types:

• Paper or Film
• Image at specified size (max 8.5" x 14")
• Right Reading, Positive
• Minimum Resolution 360 dpi
• Composites Only (no separated or keyline)
• Colors Specified

What about color choice?
Let us help you with that. In many cases the best choice for the final embroidered design color(s) is not necessarily the standard design color(s). On many garments a contrasting or tonal color choice maight appear far more attractive and cost less than the standard design color(s). For example, if your logo design contains a specific shade of green, it might well clash excessively with a shirt in a different shade of green so that a single color embroidered design in a cantrasting or tonal (tone-on-tone) color works better.

What about the garment I choose - does that make a difference?
It can and often does make a difference. We already mentioned that garment color and logo color(s) are an important consideration. Type of fabric and fabric weight can be equally as important. For example, very light-weight fabrics do not do well with embroidered designs that are very complex with high stitch counts. Special fabrics like silk, satin or heavy fabric like canvas may require modification as well -- we'll help you with all this and more.

Can I see a finished embroidered piece before my garments are done?
Sample sew outs are available upon request. If you would like your final logo sewn on a sample this can be arranged also. However, keep in mind that sew-outs and sample garments take time and will increase the time your order takes to complete.

How about additional orders?
For repeat garments it's easy. We already have all the information available to do an exact repeat of a garment. Just email or call us and we will be happy to help you. Chosing a different garment and colors is often just about as easy. Just let us know what you need.