Im a new member as of last week and I’ve heard that there’s an embroidery machine around and ive been interested in making patches like such:
is this possible with the hardware we have? I did notice I juuust missed a class over Programming Machine Embroidery. Anyways, I look forward to many crafting days in the future 
@John_Marlow is the on-hand SME. She taught an excellent class on the embroidery machine, and I’m sure an equally great one on the programming that I, unfortunately, was unable to attend. I believe there is a good amount of interest in patch making.
Yes, it is possible to make patches.
But, I would say making patches of the same quality that you would buy are an advanced embroidery project and not where I would suggest you start to learn to embroider. This is because it takes a full range of embroidery skills to make a patch like you would buy. The biggest challenge is the satin edge of the patch. If you embroider on a piece of material that you can hoop fully, you have to cut next to your satin edge to extract the patch from the material, this usually leave a bit of fabric that looks trashy or you accidentally cut into you stitching which allows it to unravel and messes up your patch. There is material on the market that allows you to cut it with a heat knife rather than scissors. What is nice about this is the heat knife tends to cut the fabric better than it cuts the stitching. This allows you to drag the knife right against your edge to get the cleanest cut. Also, in the case that you cut your stitching, the fabric has a bit of hot liquid plastic that will glue the stitching down. These methods will work but neither produce the badges I like to buy.
When I make a Patch, I custom cut my patch material to the shape of the patch. I then adhere it to a hooped piece of wash away backing and stitch it down as the first process of embroidery. from there I do a stabilizing stitch under my artwork to better hold the patch blank to the backing. This is important to avoid puckering all over the patch. Then I run the design, you need to know how to program your artwork when embroidering a patch, because you will have to deal with pull compensation and the directions your machine embroiders in, because the patch blank isn’t hooped into the frame to keep it strait, it is just floating and you will see quickly if you have pulling that you will need to adjust. After you have run the job a couple times and the artwork is embroidery with as even pull as you can get, then you run the border satin stitch. From there you un-hoop the patch and wash away the backing. Allow the patch to dry and then flatten it in the heat press before applying the heat transfer glue to the back of the patch. Then you are done. Just that easy.
I would suggest not trying to do more than one patch at a time until you have fully figured out the process for a single patch. You will notice multiple patches at once is an exponential increase in difficulty.
Follow @Nick’s advice. He’s a professional and definitely knows what he’s doing.
I’d like to add some additional thoughts.
Here’s a shortcut. It won’t be as good as what Nick describes, but it’s workable given what we have at DMS. You will still have to apply heat transfer glue, etc. when you are finished.
Nick has apparently had good success with wash-away stabilizer, but he uses magnetic hoops. We have only tension hoops and I don’t know if the wash-away stabilizer can stand that tension. You may have to use cut-away stabilizer as your backing, but if you do at least it won’t leave fuzzies around the edge like raw fabric does. If you have to use cut-away stabilizer you will see a faint edge of the stabilizer, so you might want to consider black stabilizer depending on the color of your patch outline.
Now, as for the specific patch you’ve shown - it looks highly detailed to me. Detail is anathema to patch making (or any embroidery). Remember that you’re dealing with discrete stitches. It’s like painting with dots. At some point if you don’t have enough stitches you just won’t see the detail. For instance, rather than outlining the bricks, I would try to create bricks using texture instead. Of course you could make the patch bigger, which would help with the detail, but then you’re more likely to have problems with push/pull compensation.
Our programming software is rudimentary. It doesn’t have features to accommodate some of the more complex challenges. But having said that, here’s an example of something I programmed with it just to give you an example of what’s possible. I’m sure some others can chime in with their examples, too.
Yeah, Wash-Away Stabilizer can be a true pain. When using tension hoops, you often have to double or triple it up when using it. But, the magnetic hoops are easier on your fabric and stabilizer. You can also do a hybrid of Wash-Away and tear-away. I’m not a fan of the thicker tear-away when doing patches as it leaves strings sometimes. but if you use the really thin tear-away aided by a layer of wash-away you will get the pluses of both. Much of this info comes from just trial and error, so expect to have to try things and make sure they work for you.
@John_Marlow is a good teacher, maybe you can get her to develop a class on a method that works the best on the DMS machines?
Brilliant. I hadn’t considered that.
this is fantastic information! thanks to everyone
I’m using tearaway stabilzer (black or white as needed), and have just started using laser cut fabric blanks stuck down with fabric basting spray adhesive. It’s taking a little bit to dial everything in, but I’m getting closer to the level of quality I want. Doing this at home on a Husquvarna Topaz 50 machine using their Premier software for the design work.
oh yeah, perhaps an obvious question - but do I need to take a class before using the embroidery machine? I noticed that there was a lot of documentation on the wiki
Final results, ruler added for scale. Kanji on the rocker patch is “Uchū kaizoku”, which translates to “Space Pirate”.
Yes, the embroidery machine is a training required thingy.
Paging @John_Marlow (and not sure who else teaches it)
that looks awesome, … and amazing because 20 characters.
It does look awesome.
I’d like to point out to the casual observer that Paul used his home machine, which has a larger area than the one we have at DMS. The Babylock machine we have at DMS can embroider a 5x7 image.
Nice results @Hardsuit,
How fast does your machine at home embroider think in stitches per minute? How many stitches in your design? About how long did the file take to run? I love these details as in production this is the difference between a super profitable and easy job vs a total pain in the behind.
I bet a skull that size would take a super long time to embroider on the babylock at DMS. I think the babylock tops out at around 100 to 200 stitches per minute. To put this in context, my industrial machine tops out well over 1000 stitches per minute, but I run the majority of my jobs at 900 stitches per minute. Time of job is a real concern when you are thinking about taking this on at DMS.
Hmm. Not sure on top speed on my model, I’d guess it maxes out close to 8-900spm. Higher tier models hit 1,100 spm I think. The skull was just under 25000 stitches, and took about 90 minutes. Normally it should be faster than that but the fill pattern I chose had a much slower maximum spm.
Maximum hoop size for my machine is 360 x 200mm, so roughly double the size of the Babylock at the space.
Yeah,
90 minutes is dedication. Sounds like you have a nice machine as well. Congrats sir.
That patch on the baby lock would probably take 2 or 3 times as long if not longer. Good food for thought.
Oh, I’m sure I could easily get that under an hour simply by changing the fill pattern. I just really liked the effect that particular stitch pattern gave, and don’t have the pressures of maximizing machine throughput that a commercial business does.
No real dedication involved, just have to eyeball it occasionally to check for a thread break or bobbin refill. It handles both issues very well, so no big deal to let it run on its own while I do something else nearby.
Yeah,
That is totally doable, wasn’t suggesting otherwise. It just looked like a long job to me and long jobs on nice machines are crazy jobs on the babylock. I’ve had multiple full back jacket jobs that took 2 or 3 hours on my machine to embroider per piece. They are such a pain when you have to do 50 or 100 of them. I like the small jobs, because checking for thread breaks on the same piece for 10 plus times is just annoying.
