Pulling material

[ice_man]

I am at a stalemate here. Doing a monogram on yard goods and it is pulling and puckering. I can say I haven't had this problem to bad in the past. The mono is 6" high and i am paying particular attention to how tight the material is being hooped. It is NOT drum head tight AND the material doesn't ripple when the finger is pushed across. I have tried with adhesive spray and without and Can't get it to stop.
Bobbin thread is 50 wgt cotton, have tried loose to where the bobbin drops ever so slowly when just held by the thread and tighter to where when you flick it the bobbin case drops about 4" per flick.
Have tried thread feed set at all ranges from 1 to 6 and all that accomplishes is using more of the colored thread from the spool. At these settings the shown bobbin on the bottom is from roughly 10% of the width to approx 70%.
My machine is a redheaded princess and she is about 4 years old (sorry for revealing her age).
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated because I am stuck.

[Judy]

Hi there. Have you tried a smaller, sharp point needle instead of a ball point?

[Dorothy Compton]

Six inches is quite large. Is it within the specs for the lettering? Is is column (satin) or fill stitch? What kind of underlay are you using? Is this a melco font within DS or from another program?

Dorothy Compton, Owner
www.BeeEmbroidered.com
(916) 635-7467

[ice_man]

Have tried 2 layers 1.5 oz tearaway and 2 oz cutaway. The style is Empire from Embroidery Arts and 6" is should be within the size for this style, stitch type is satin, widest point is 3/8". I realize this is wide but this will end up in a no wear location. Program is Design Shop Pro.

[Dorothy Compton]

What you may want to try is adhering some fusible backing to the material--any fabric store should have some. Than use one piece of cutaway. Hope this helps. Oh....you might want some underlay to stabilize the fabric too.

Dorothy Compton
www.BeeEmbroidered.com
(916) 635-7467

[Pure Embroidery]

Try this. I have done something like this once before where the customer insisted on a "satin" stitch on large monogram. I used a double zig-zag underlay with an additional edge-walk underlay. Then instead of a satin stitch, I used a fill stitch with a density of 8. With the double zigzag, I had a good fill density.

Now, I duplicated the lettering, no underlay stitch with a satin topstitch. The result was perferct. No puckering becuase I had good underlay with the zigzay and fill stitch. No curling becuase the satin stitch wasn't pulling on the fabric; it had the underlays and satin stitch to hold it in place.

It was a large stitch-count design, but better that then to have it pucker on you.

I used two cutaway backings. One was 3oz and the other was almost like a light felt, probably 4oz.

Both backings were the "soft" style, so no problem on wearability.

I also slowed the machine down for the satin stitch, I think to around 600 or 650 spm.

Hope this helps.