[Orleanse]

I've noticed that some shops will heat press twill applique onto jerseys and then they will go over the edges with a zig zag stitch on a sewing machine to finish it off.

Are there any upsides to this other than not owning an embroidery machine?

 

[tfalk]

Not sure exactly what your question is? From your previous posts, you already have an Ioline for cutting the shapes and an embroidery machine. What exactly are you looking for?

The zig zag stitching can be done on a sewing machine by hand or it can be done on an embroidery machine.

 

[numbercruncher]

It used to be that the heat press was merely to hold the applique in place(often had adhesive back) which allowed for the zig zag to secure the properly positioned piece.

 

[gardenhillemb]

If you have an experienced person sewing, heat applying the twill and then hand sewing is quicker and easier than embroidering applique unless you're doing lots of pieces of the same thing. It all depends on if you have a person that sews (I don't, so I embroidery/applique).

 

[tfalk]

Not always the case Pat... we had someone machine sewing greek letter shirts for us with 3 double layer letters. It would take them almost an hour to do 2 shirts. I have 2 embroidery machines that I can do 7-10 shirts an hour now. I've done as many as 25 double-layer letters in an hour. I will definitely agree with you on doing lots of the same thing... we do all of the same letters at the same time instead of doing a complete shirt at a time.

 

[gardenhillemb]

Ted, you are correct. It depends on what you're doing. I can't sew worth a darn so I do applique with my machines, but there are some times when hand sewing makes sense for some people. One that comes to mind is sewing years on letter jackets.

 

[numbercruncher]

out of curiosity - do you sew together the 2-color letters first then place on the garment or place the bottom color on the garment sew, then place and sew the top color ? What's the standard used for zig-zags per inch?

 

[tfalk]

We cut the layers, heat press the 2 layers together, press them onto the shirts, then sew them. By using 2 machines, I can run all the backgrounds on 1 machine, then move to the other machine to run the foregrounds without rehooping or reloading stitch files.