The Language of Machine Embroidery

Our regular listeners know this, but 2 Regular Guys are all about garment decorating, a bit of fun, and no rants or lectures or selling. We are not doing this for our employers, but rather for our industry. Since February 2013, The 2 Regular Guys have been the first and the most listened to garment decorating industry podcast on this planet! We are humbled by all of you tuning in each week. We work hard to bring you information that will make your business better, and our industry better. Take a look at our incredible weekly guest list and you’ll understand where this industry goes for news, interviews and the heartbeat of garment decorating. Thanks for listening!

News

• ISS – Impressions Expo next year has announced its Gulf Coast Show for 2020. Instead of Houston the show will be in Baton Rouge, June 18-20.

• Jay Busselle’s Style Guide – The Roadmap to Better Branding – is done other than proofing and will be available soon.

• Nate Leber is hosting a super informal meet-up at the Columbus NBM show. It will be on Friday, September 13th at 4:30 p.m. after the exhibit hall closes. I’m having it at Char Bar, which is straight across High Street from the Convention Center and is famous for their Long Island Ice Teas.

The Language of Machine Embroidery

Lisa Shaw has been involved with machine embroidery education and inspiration since the mid-90s. Machine embroidery is her passion as well as her occupation – this combination makes for an artistic as well as an efficient perspective for the needs of the machine embroidery software user. She has appeared on It’s Sew Easy TV show, has online classes on Bluprint and written articles for trade magazines such as Creative Machine Embroidery and Designs in Machine embroidery magazine. She continues to travel worldwide teaching and promoting the Embrilliance software programs. Her latest adventure is hosting the Afterhours with Lisa Live broadcast on her Facebook page where you can catch her most Monday evenings.

Aaron: Like any industry, embroiderers tend to talk in acronyms and hard-to-decipher terms that a newbie might not understand. WSS, FSL, Floating, Basting, Tensions and Tatami – Let’s talk acronyms and terms; what do you find trips up new embroiderers? 

Terry: What exactly is applique? Is using applique the same as creating a patch? What about rip-away applique?

Aaron: New embroiderers often stress about setting themselves up to digitize and debate brands back and forth, where I have known more than a few embroiders that never digitize at all. Do you think most embroiderers need digitizing software, or is customizing software enough? What are the key differences?

Terry: Now that we’re on software, here’s a software term that makes people giggle. Dongles! What are they, and why do they matter?

Aaron: Let’s talk a little about another set of software terms folks may not be using correctly: updates and upgrades- What are the differences between the two, and how do you decide when to step up to new tools?

Terry: We all know that person who uses big words for which they may or may not have a handle on the correct meaning. Which embroidery terms get misused often- do you have a pet peeve for your glossary?

Aaron: If I have one thing I’d like to never hear again, it’s the question “How do I ‘convert’ a JPG to a DST file?” Let’s talk autodigitizing- what have you seen out there, and what place do you think it has in our tools?

Terry: Let’s talk about “fonts”. What’s the difference between Truetype fonts and embroidery fonts?  You hear about object-based keyboard fonts, stitch-based keyboard fonts, and embroidery letter designs, but what difference does it make to decorators?