embroidering on golf bag

[Shuffletown Embroidery]

Is anyone willing to talk me through the process of doing a name on a Nike golf tour bag? I have the large slim line clamps.
Please send a phone number and a convenient time to call.
Thanks,
Mary

[KNC Designs]

Are these the full size tour bags that have the hard sides? If so I just turned down a order to do 50 bags becasue I couldn't figure out a way to get the bag loaded on to the machine.Even with taking the little plastic table off there was not enough room between the clamp and arm assembly and the top of the cart.And then there was the weight issue,I was not comfortable with that much weight being moved around by the machine.

Curtis

[Shuffletown Embroidery]

Yes it is. I plan to hold the bag while it sews because it's only one. I don't know if I would agree to do 50 either!
So you've determined that there's not room even with the plastic table removed. Hmmmm. My tech said that there's more room on old "Red" than on the XT, so that's the machine I've decided to use. I hope this will work. I haven't actually checked.
Mary

[Juli in Kona]

I just did a golf bag - my first. It was a very light weight type and had a very long - over 12" - flap that unzipped up one side, around the top and down the other side. That is where the embroidery went. I used just a regular round 10 cm hoop to do just one name. I had to hold it while it sewed - wished I had an extra arm. But it did beautifully. Customer was very happy. I hope you have added on a "difficulty" charge.

Juli in Kona

[Shuffletown Embroidery]

Hi all,
I wanted to update everyone on how I did with the golf tour bag. This bag has hard sides and is very large. The area being embroidered is a pocket flap with a very fine woven surface that looks like leather and is lined with foam.
Spacing - slightly denser than normal; underlay - edge walk and double zigzag; font - Arial rounded; presser foot 2 clicks from the top; machine speed - I didn't go any higher than 600 spm; hoop - large Slim Line clamp 8X8

Design prep - I digitized the lettering to minimize frame movement and I put a color stop between line breaks so that I could put a stop in the sewout. This gave me a comfort level that I would be able to stop the machine if there was a problem when the frame shifted to the new line.

Tricks:
1. Removed the sewing table.
2. Set up a Work Mate to support the bag in front of the machine.
3. Placed a 1/4" X 24"x24" sheet of plywood on the workmate. Used 1X4's to shim this up to the proper sewing height.
4. Placed a Handi-Quilter machine holder gizmo on the plywood, balanced the golf bag on it, and adjusted the handi-quilter so that it wouldn't hit anything during the sewing process.
5. Hooped the golf bag and did a test by advancing through the design to see how everything worked. I had to adjust the placement of the handi-quilter apparatus a little bit.

To think that I was about to sell my hobbyist Handi-Quilter!!! Now it's an embroidery tool. [img]smile.gif[/img] I didn't even have to hold the bag!!!

For those of you who don't know what the handi-quilter thing is, it's two platforms on wheels; one sits on top of the other with the wheels of each table at 90-degree angles to the other. They hold a sewing machine and allow it to easily move back and forth and to and fro. That's exactly how it worked with the golf bag!

Many, many thanks to Karen Torluemke in Kansas for talking through the issues with me and giving me the courage I needed to go for it. Now I have a new customer with a lot of golf buddies!

Oh, Curtis, I'd take a 50 bag order now. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Mary

[KNC Designs]

Hey I am glad you got it done! Just curious what size was the opening on the top of the bag? The bags I was looking at were about 1 foot at the top opening and came up the top of the needles without the table in place.

Curtis

[Shuffletown Embroidery]

The pocket flap is about 10" wide x 15-or-so" tall. It unzipped on 3 sides - top, right-side, bottom. I placed the hard-sided bag so that it sat in front of the hook, not under it, and the long edge of the pocket flap extended far enough into the sewing area to hoop it in the clamp. I leveled the bag so that the hard side was on the same plane as the pocket so that it wouldn't pull down on the hoop arms. When sewing the design area closest to the front edge of the hoop, the bag was almost touching the hook area, but not quite. The design was about 6.5" wide, so the bag had to move freely that far from front to back; and about 4" tall, so the bag had to move that much from left to right. That's where that Handi-quilter gizmo was so useful. It has at least that much range of motion front to back and unlimited from right to left - at least until it falls off the surface of the table it's sitting on.
I hope this makes sense. Next time, I'll take a picture so I can share.
Mary