Hi, it’s Michael from Printful, and in the next few minutes,
I’ll explain what to look out for when creating designs with unlimited
embroidery so that your customers will yearn for more products instead of issuing a return.
So, the first suggestion is to avoid small and detailed embroidery designs.
Think of details as a red herring—a distraction on the path to an identifiable design.
The minimum requirements for small elements are identical
to traditional embroidery—lines should be at least 0.05″ thick,
whereas text should be at least 0.25″ tall and thick. Smaller elements will cause the entire
composition to be indistinguishable, color shifting, and increase embroidery stiffness.
Another measurement that you should always keep in mind is 0.86″.
That’s the minimum width of the design elements required for Colorleel printers
to create a smooth transition between colors. As a result, your design will lack impact,
fail to convey the intended message, and reduce the garment’s flexibility,
making the product uncomfortable to wear. Instead, focus on large, simple,
and filled shapes to create a visually pleasing design with the desired color transitions.
Next, you want to consider the garment’s weight when choosing products for embroidery.
When you combine lightweight garments with small detailed designs, you get stiff embroidery,
lack of fabric flexibility, and contracted and puckered material. That’s because at
least 11.8″ or 300 mm of thread needs to be sewn into the fabric to create a
seamless transition between the color shifts in every part of your design.
The finished product looks like it has a stitched hole instead of a premium decoration. That’s why
it’s best to choose products with heavyweight fabric.
Like hats, right?
Even though hats have a thicker material that prevents puckering, some models,
like dad hats, have seams connecting different hat panels. Seams often introduce additional
layers or folds of fabric with a different texture than other areas. This variation in
texture causes the embroidery thread to interact differently with the material,
which might cause color misalignment on some of your design elements.
A standard center seam is 0.4″–0.6″ wide,
so make sure to adjust your design so that there’s plenty of space around the seam.
If you want to create bright embroidery designs,
you can achieve that without neon and metallic colors.
With the help of Coloreel, unlimited embroidery
allows you to go beyond the limited thread colors of standard embroidery,
and you still need to understand how it works to better choose appropriate colors for your designs.
The process is straightforward—during embroidery, a white recycled polyester
thread is colored with CMYK inks. Hues like neon and metallic are outside of the CMYK color
space. As a result, these hues can’t be reproduced to match the color you see on your backlit screen.
When creating designs for unlimited embroidery, use the same approach as
you would for DTG products —save and upload your design files in the sRGB color profile.
You should also enable gamut warning in your graphic software to help you
find the right color and prevent any vivid hues
from making it into the final product since they will not look as intended.
Next, let’s talk about the best ways to use gradients.
First, you must understand the difference between short and long gradients in embroidery.
A short color gradient is a quick transition between colors over a small area. It includes
only a few shades or hues. This type of gradient creates a more abrupt or rapid change in color.
Variations of analogous colors next to each other in the color wheel will give you such a result. To
avoid it, you can opt for the monochromatic scheme that uses shades of a single hue.
A long color gradient is a gradual color transition over a large area. It includes more
hues that make the color shift appear seamless. Longer gradients generally provide a soft and
harmonious visual effect that adds depth to your embroidery design.
Apart from length, gradients also differ by the geometrical orientation of the color shift. The
most common ones are: Linear
Radial Angle
Reflected Diamond
During the testing phase, we found that linear gradients
have the best outcome since the color transition happens in a straight line.
However, if you were to use a solid shape with small elements in your
designs to have the gradient naturally flow through the entire composition,
remember about the minimal surface width,
as sometimes the orientation of the gradient may not be exact for each separate element.
Text-based designs from single sans or sans-serif
fonts will have a sharp color transition because it’s confined to a small area.
A design consisting of words provides more space for a seamless, longer gradient.
The same applies to other elements as well. The smaller the surface,
the sharper the shift. The bigger the surface, the smoother.
If your next embroidery design consists of solid shapes, adding an outline around the composition
can provide several benefits. An outline helps to define the shape and boundaries of the design,
making it easily recognizable on the product. It’s worth noting that
it also gives a polished look to the entire design, making it appear more professional,
which is important as it adds extra value to the premium decoration technique. While
it’s not mandatory to use an outline, the decision depends on your personal preference.
Lastly, let’s talk about negative space objects.
These are the empty spaces in the artwork where the fabric shows through the design. Earlier,
we discussed how the stitching affects the flexibility of the material. Even though we
talked about small details, negative spaces between elements can have a similar effect as
they will deform the entire design and cause the edges of the embroidered shapes to be uneven. You
can avoid this outcome by filling the negative spaces with color and not using small gradients.
I hope the actionable tips and insights shared in this video inspired you to unleash your
creativity and take your embroidery projects to new heights. Let your imagination run wild,
and watch your designs come to life stitch by stitch.
If you want to know more about Coloreel’s unlimited embroidery, check out our podcast
episode, where we had the opportunity to talk with the CEO of Coloreel himself.