Embroidery on Towelling

SPECIAL FEATURE: EMBROIDERY TowellingON

By Leanne Church Towels are one of the most popular items for embroidery. They make fantastic gifts, especially for those who have unusual names, as it’s possible to personalise something that brings a lot of joy to the receiver. If you would like to know more about this technique, here are a few things to consider and some tips and tricks to get great results when stitching on towelling.

Things to avoid when stitching on towels

Not all designs are appropriate for towelling fabric. The majority of embroidery designs are created for lightweight woven fabric, not thick towelling.

Designs with outlines may not line up due to the thickness of the towelling. If you are unsure of this, then maybe avoid this design and fi nd an alternative without outlines.

Buy a good-quality towel that won’t shrink, or is preshrunk. If you intend to stitch on the band, your design may not turn out the way you wanted after a few washes as the bands tend to shrink in the wash. If they are gifts or you are selling towels, then you don’t have the option of prewashing. Washing any garment warrants it as second-hand and you technically can’t sell it as a new product.

Don’t use quilting designs unless you have a fabric appliqué background or a fi ll stitch patch at the back. Without a background, or underlay, the stitches will sink into the towelling pile and will not be very appealing.

Inbuilt lettering on your machine is created for fabrics without texture. Do not use them for lettering on towelling as they do not have the correct underlay required for stitching on towelling. In fact, there is usually just a run/ travel stitch to each section of the letter and no underlay. Using wash-away stabiliser will not fi x this — once it is washed the stabiliser is gone. Those pesky fi bres will migrate through the satin stitches if there is an incorrect underlay or none at all. Therefore, you will need to create lettering that is suitable with embroidery software.

Do you use tear-away or cut-away stabiliser on the back of the towel?

Cut-away stabiliser is the better option for the back of the towel. It will hold its position and keep your embroidery looking great (even though you may think it doesn’t look good). Simply cut back the cut-away stabiliser very close to the design with a pair of curved appliqué scissors.

Tear away is a paper-based stabiliser and once you wash it a few times, it will break down and your embroidery may start to waver.

Whichever you use on the back, using water-soluble stabiliser on the top of the towelling will provide an even surface on which to embroider. It can be torn away at the end and, using a damp sponge, you can eliminate the excess. If you use tweezers to pull away the excess, be careful not to pull the towel fi bres.

Where do I place my embroidery?

This is a personal choice. If my towel doesn’t have a band, then I align the bottom of the embroidery 2in from the bottom edge of the towel. If there is a band on the towel, then I place it so the base of the embroidery is 1in from the top of the band. I usually print out a template on parchment paper and see what looks best before I begin.

The placement will also depend on how you hang your towel on the towelling rail. If it is fl at, the centre is fi ne. If

Marking the stabiliser in the hoop will allow you to line up the placement of the design. Calculate half of the vertical measurement and half of the horizontal measurement and then calculate the placement on the towel. Mark the towel with a pin and then align both centres. Place the towel on stabiliser that has been sprayed with a temporary adhesive spray such as 505.

The water-soluble stabiliser should be machine basted prior to stitching out the design.

If you don’t hoop your water-soluble stabiliser in the hoop, you can hold it in place as the machine is stitching with a paintbrush. If you accidently stitch over it, you can easily pull the bristles out. Better than hitting a pair of tweezers or a fi nger and breaking a needle!

you fold it in half lengthways, I have the opening to the right. If the towels are for home, take into consideration where the towel rail is located in the bathroom. I make sure the folded towel opening is facing away from the doorway so the embroidery looks nice when you walk into the room.

What is underlay?

The design or lettering should include a good underlay. The underlay is the stitching that you cannot see. It forms a base layer of stitching beneath the fi nal design. It prepares your fabric for intricate designs. Underlay will also secure your stabiliser to the back of the fabric.

If you do not have a good underlay, especially in lettering, after laundering the towel the water-soluble stabiliser will be gone, towel fi bres will come through and your design will look terrible.

It is advisable to stitch lettering with a good underlay to hold the fi bres and maintain a smooth design after laundering.

Why do I use a topping on my towel?

The plastic-style topping, or Washaway, Solvy or water soluble as they are commonly known, is for holding the fi bres down, allowing the design to run smoothly so the fi bres don’t get caught in the foot of the machine. Your machine foot height should be only millimetres from the plastic base.

Floating a towel

Sometimes it is not possible to hoop a towel because of its thickness, especially on a single-needle machine. If you do hoop a towel in a single-needle hoop you could break it when tightening the screw or it may pop out of the hoop during stitching. In this case it is recommended to use the fl oating method to stitch out the design.

T o do this, hoop either a cut-away or tear-away stabiliser (depending on your backing preference). Then draw a line down and across the stabiliser to fi nd the centre of the hoop. Find and mark the centre of the area on the towel that you wish to embroider. Spray the hooped stabiliser with a light adhesive — such as 505 — avoiding the sides of the hoop as much as possible. Line up the drawn line on the stabiliser and the marking on the towel and lightly press the towelling onto the hoop. It is recommended to use the machine’s basting stitch (if it has one) to stitch around the edge to help keep the towel in place as the design sews.

Using a water-soluble plastic fi lm on top of the towel will hold the fi bres in place and allow for smooth stitching. Be aware that not all designs are appropriate for stitching on towelling — fi lled-in designs like this will create a design that will launder well.

What size needle do I use?

There are two needle sizes for embroidery — 75/11 and 90/14. If it is a high-density good-quality towel, I would use a 90/14, but it also depends on your design. Testing and getting to know your machine, fabrics and embroidery designs is a learning curve, and often trial and error is the best way to learn.

What are Knockdown, Smash stitch and Taoru stitch?

These words are probably a bit foreign to most, but if you have embroidery software, these stitches are used to stitch out an open weave fi ll stitch that will hold down the fi bres so that you have a fl at surface area on which to stitch your embroidery. This means your embroidery will be able to stand out on the towel and not sink into the fi bre. This is great for designs that you want to, or must, use but which need that extra background of stitching to make them stand out.

You can create this effect with all embroidery software, but some are easier than others. You can use the same colour thread as the towel or sometimes it is nice to have a contrast colour.

The Knockdown Stitch by Embrilliance software is a great automatic stitch that will add this feature to the design instantly and place it fi rst in the stitching order. Hatch Software and Wilcom have a similar effect with a few extra steps, and they call this the Smash stitch. I have created this effect in Brother PE-Design, and I have coined the phrase ‘Taoru stitch’, which is the Japanese word for towel. If you would like more information on this, contact your local dealer or search these terms online. There are plenty of videos on YouTube to watch.

The top embroidery shows lettering that has Knockdown, Smash or Taoru stitch under the design to hold the fi bre down. The lettering at the bottom does not have Knockdown, Smash or Taoru stitch. As you can see by these two examples, you can get great results with either. The second design without the Knockdown, Smash or Taoru stitch will maintain its look as it is using a satin-fi ll stitch and not a true satin stitch. Wide satin stitch greater than 7mm should be a satin/satin fi ll so that the stitches will not pull if caught on fi ngernails, jewellery etc. After laundering, if the design is narrow or you have no underlay or background stitch, fi bres may appear to be coming through the design, making it unappealing. Use a thicker style of lettering to stop this from happening.

There are many ways to embroider a towel and we all have our own ideas on how to do it. Experiment to fi nd what works for you. Float or hoop? Cut away or tear away? What design to use? When you fi nd a method you are happy with, go for it. The worst you can do is muck up a towel and if you do, use that one for testing or cut it up for rags. It’s just a towel and not the end of the world. So if you haven’t embroidered a towel yet, give it a try. There will be someone in your life who will appreciate a personalised gift!

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