May 22, 2022 Quality and Creativity Wow, can’t believe we are starting the summer already..Seems like time just flies by! I have been busy making up new dishtowels for the shops, and have had a quilt commission, so things are moving, ever so slowly. What I am learning with each of these projects is that quality should never be sacrificed to quantity. Every piece, every garment, every design must be carefully and thoroughly checked so the best quality results entail. Otherwise, you won’t be happy with the outcome and neither will the customer. An example of this recently was a design that was done by a digitizer for a customer. Now, I know just enough about the Hatch software to be dangerous, and am actively enhancing my knowledge with online courses. However, that doesn’t help when during a sew out, the design doesn’t sew clearly. In this case, it was a flag that the customer wanted below the name of her squadron. The flag was small and while I used the right needle, tested the tension on the embroidery machine before I started, nothing made a difference to the flag. Unfortunately, the trouble was the design itself. Because it’s a weekend, I didn’t have my usual experts I could ask about it. I spent the afternoon trying to look at pull compensation, underlay, and other settings to try and fix it. Again, still learning here. Very frustrating and still didn’t have what I needed; each edit made the flag worse, so again, learning experience for me. Instead, I went to the John Deere website (https://digitizingmadeeasy.com) and bought his embroidered flag. It fit the dimensions I needed, and I’ve never had a bad design from him. I replaced the flag in the original design with this one. And, lo and behold, perfection! I didn’t lose clarity or design registration, which can happen with very small designs. Sometimes it takes some out of the box thinking to really create a quality design. In this case, I have had enough trouble with designs and have a large enough design inventory to be able to address the problem. It may not have been ideal or what a digitizer of experience would have done, but the design was beautiful, and the customer was pleased. I love what I do, and this again is a journey into learning and becoming a quality embroiderer. A shout out to Joyce Jagger, my embroidery coach (https://theembroiderycoach.com) for helping me along the way! As I continue to learn the digitizing basics to be able to edit designs to perfection, the knowledge and support she has provided is and continues to be awesome.
