Hesitant to take of embroidery on caps?

Neil Dunton is an experienced digitiser with decades of experience based in South Africa. In this article he provides some expert advice on how to perfect embroidery on caps.

Have faith, armed with all you need to know, embroidery onto readymade caps is not that difficult.

I imported the first multi-head (12) cap machine apparently into South Africa back in 1992 when early frames restricted the sewing area to 55x100mm and often allowed movement of the cap within the frame.

With the introduction of the 270ᵒ frames in the late nineties, the securing clamps cured these problems and allowed for taller designs, but I noticed many caps with large gaps between the peak and the lowest point of the design. This is perhaps due to the fears of hitting the frame.

To overcome this, ask your digitiser to place the start/ finish point at bottom centre. Then, using your laser pointer (if you have one) position the starting point approximately 10mm up the centre seam.

Don’t forget to invert the design by 180ᵒ. Eureka.

The following points might also be of assistance.

• In my early days of digitising I was taught to always make the stitch direction on Tatami (fill) stitching vertically. This is apparently because of the way light bounces off it, creating additional sheen. However, and this is important, the direction on cap fronts must be horizontal, otherwise the cap seam will be prominent.
• On low profile front caps, large rectangular designs can appear out of shape. The only way I’ve found to overcome this is to artificially distort the top of the design so that it appears ‘square’.
• I’ve never had much success embroidering from ‘ear to ear’, finding that the side designs often sew off registration and can end up skew. To overcome this I prefer to frame up the cap side with a hoop and sew in them in the normal way.
• Avoid thin lettering fonts which can sink into the cap fabric, particularly on brushed cotton. In such cases, increase the Pull Compensation to 0.35 to beef up the letter column.

In conclusion, don’t be afraid to try cap embroidery, it can be profitable while increasing your product offering.