Embroidery Digitizing - Let's Talk Lettering - Part I

Let’s talk lettering – Part I

Every embroidery software, from the simplest home software to the most expensive commercial software, has a lettering function of some kind.  In the past, the quality of the keyboard embroidered letters has varied amongst these as has the functionality of the softwares to manipulate and edit them. These days, the user friendliness has gotten much better even in the lower cost softwares and the differences from brand to brand are blurring more and more.

But I don’t want to talk about specific brands of embroidery software or their keyboard fonts. I mention this to say that there is a time and a place for using keyboard lettering and a time when custom lettering should be used.   A good digitizer knows which is called for on each job.

Since I am a custom digitizer working in the commercial industry, I use the keyboard lettering maybe $30% to 40% of the time. The rest of the time, my lettering is custom digitized by hand, specifically for the customer’s logo. Even when using keyboard lettering, the individual letters still needed to be edited for the fabric and for pull compensation. Never do I use keyboard lettering straight “out of the can” and my software creates great lettering, however, no keyboard font can automatically adjust for every fabric or design situation.  

If you’re new to digitizing, you may tend to crutch on the font lettering but avoid doing this too much.  Watch designs with lettering that sews well to see how the letters join and corner for a better understanding of how lettering should look and path. What you learn you will apply to your hand digitized lettering.

As for keyboard lettering itself, familiarize yourself with what your lettering can do and recommended sizes for each font, understanding that some lettering styles do better at smaller sizes than others. If you are extensively editing the keyboard font you’re using, you are better off digitizing the letters by hand. There’s a “gray area” once you get down to ¼” letters and below.  There are some fonts that will do fine at a slightly smaller size (Usually these are block type fonts with no serifs) but fabric strongly comes into play at that point as to whether they will sew cleanly. There’s no way to insure the design will do well as the customer sews the design on multiple fabrics, but staying above the ¼” standard font size for basic lettering will help. With wildly different fabrics, like fleece and terry, you will need an alternate version of your design to accommodate those incorporating more underlay and density.

Certain fabrics or designs will allow block lettering as small as .16” tall to sew fairly descent, especially nylons and twill.  Fabrics such as knits and some piques are rather unforgiving even with ¼” lettering and will “sawtooth” much more. Generally, the smaller the letters, the lower the density but you have to hit the “sweet spot”. Dense enough for coverage and smooth edges but not so much as to cause crowded spacing, knots and bunching at the joints and bulging of the letters themselves. This is the reason that it’s preferable to know the fabric the design is intended for right up front.

I want to take a moment here to mention True Type font conversions. Keyboard embroidered lettering created from TT fonts on your software.  A few of these do, just, OK.  Most suck. None of them compare to digitizing lettering by hand. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and I just don’t go there, nuf said.

Understanding the dynamics of embroidered lettering, densities, underlays, column widths and pull compensation and how each of these relate to different fabric biases and types will take you farther down the road than just always using keyboard fonts.

In Part II, we’ll cover the customer side and charging for your time with lettering.

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NeedleUp Digitizing LLC is owned and operated by Donna Lehmann, a 20yr veteran of the embroidery/digitizing industry. She can be reached at NeedleUp, donna@needleup.com or  303-287-6633 for digitizing, consultation and classes M-F.