Business Logo Shirt Embroidery
When I was a kid I played around with cross stitching. As an adult I have seen some beautiful pieces of art created through embroidery and so I wanted to try my hand at it. After practicing a couple different stitches I decided trial by fire and jumped into a full project. I decided to make a present for my lovely mother, a shirt with our company logo embroidered on it. It was definitely a trial and error type of project. The end result isn’t perfect, but its pretty good for my first go at it and I am excited to see how I progress at this skill.
Pattern Design
First step was to create a pattern for the logo. I edited the logo using procreate on my tablet. I added a border to the logo’s original design to make it look like a patch. If I were to attempt this pattern again I would simplify some of the details in the center of the flower, because they were just too small to stitch accurately.
Pattern Transfer
Transferring my design was difficult to say the least. In a traditional embroidery transfer you would just trace your design onto a light coloured fabric by using a window or a lightbox to see the design through the fabric. Since I was using dark fabric it was not that simple.
At first I tried transfer paper, but, every time I attempted using it there were parts of the design that did not seem to come through. I’m not sure if the type of transfer paper I purchased, maybe it just wasn’t the best quality or if the design just had too many finer details. I’m interested in trying it again in the future with a more simple design.
I ended up using Paper Solvy Water Soluble Stabilizer. This worked for me. I discovered, after, I had ordered the Paper Solvy that there is also a Fabric Solvy by the same brand. I think this would have been an even better option but I didn’t want to buy more supplies and wait for them to arrive, I just wanted to jump right into my project.
Using the Paper solvy I printed my design right onto the paper and pinned where I wanted the logo to be on the shirt. From there I was free to begin stitching my design. I first stitched the outline, then I dissolved the paper in water so all I had to do was fill in the design. It may not have dissolved perfectly but it was certainly good enough.
Outline Stitch
For the outline I decided to use a stem stitch. I used this stitch because I liked how thick the result was. In hind sight, I would have used a simple back stitch because, when I finished my fill stich you couldn’t really see it anyways.
Fill Stitch
To fill in my design I used a simple satin stitch. I was very happy with how the filling stitches turned out. I didn’t want much texture in the design so the satin stitch kept it nice and simple.
Finalizing My Design
Once I was done embroidering, it was time to seal the deal. I used a cloud cover embroidery stabilizer to protect the back of the stitches and make the shirt more comfortable to wear. It was super simple, I just cut out a piece of the cloud cover that fit the size of my embroidery patch and ironed it onto the back. When everything was said and done I was pretty happy with how my first embroidery project turned out and with how much I learned along the way. I hope that some of the mistakes I made and learned from will help your project go smoother.
