Guides
Four questions come up over and over: it puckers, the thread keeps breaking, there are gaps, the small letters closed up. They look like four problems. They are mostly one — too much thread in too little room — and it is decided in the file, before the machine is ever switched on.
HeartTechniqueFlatSize46 mmStitches2 744Threads2Thread6.9 mThe fabric gets blamed and the stabiliser gets blamed, and both matter — but the cause is usually that the file puts more stitches into an area than the cloth can hold. Thread pulls as it sets, and a dense fill pulls the weave in from every side. Two things fix it in the file: fewer rows in the fill, and an underlay that anchors the cloth before the top layer lands. Nothing you do at the machine will save a file that is simply too heavy.
A break that happens at random is usually tension, a burr or a tired needle. A break that happens at the same place every single run is the file: two stitches so close together that the needle comes down where the last one already went, and cuts the thread it just laid. The floor is about 0.6 mm between penetrations — Wilcom and Hatch both strip anything shorter automatically. Below that you are not sewing the cloth, you are perforating it.
When the top stitches sink into the pile and the cloth shows through, there was nothing underneath to hold them up. Every satin and every fill wants a light layer under it that lies at a different angle. It costs a few hundred stitches and it is the difference between a mark that sits on the cloth and one that disappears into it. On knit and on towelling it is not optional.
This is the one that is decided entirely by size. A satin column holds down to about 1.0 mm wide; under that the two edges meet and the letter fills in solid. Most typefaces have strokes under 1.0 mm below roughly 5 mm of letter height — so the question is never "which font", it is "how tall". Set the height first. And at small sizes the density has to come down with it, or the thread piles up on itself and breaks.
Before a file leaves, three things are worth reading: the shortest stitch, the longest stitch and the number of trims. Shortest under 0.6 mm means needles in the same hole. Longest over 12.1 mm cannot even be stored in a DST file and will be split by the format. Trims tell you how many loose ends somebody has to cut by hand afterwards. Any digitizing software can show you all three, and most people never look.
Almost always density: the file lays down more thread than the cloth can take, and the weave pulls in as the stitches set. Stabiliser and hooping help, but a file that is too heavy will pucker on any fabric. Reduce the fill density and make sure there is underlay.
Because the file has two needle penetrations almost on top of each other, and the needle cuts the thread already lying there. The practical floor is around 0.6 mm between stitches. If it breaks at random instead, look at tension, the needle and the thread.
The top layer has sunk into the fabric because there is no underlay holding it up. Add a light underlay at a different angle to the top stitching — it is a few hundred stitches and it fixes most of it, especially on knit and towelling.
Every number on this page is one our own engine works to, and you can see all of them on your own mark before you pay: one file is $9, or from $0.20 on a yearly plan.
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