Towels

[Roxanne]

Where is the best placement for machine embroidery on bath towels and what type of stabilizer should I use under and on top of the towel?

[saskia]

the placement depends on what you will put on the towel. I place a name or text on the woven band and normal designs just above that depending how big they are.
And on top you need Water Soluble stabilizer.

[la_cole]

I agree with saskia about only needing the plastic type topping. My experience is that towels are fairly stable so a topping like Solvy is sufficient to keep the threads from being pulled into the nap.

Embroidery Library has a very useful placement guide available. You may want to check it out:

http://www.embroiderylibraryprojects.com/

[gartner]

here is another website with a great comprehensive Placement Chart for many articles including Towels.
At the bottom you can click a link to print the chart out.

http://www.diamondthreadworks.com/placement_chart.htm

Scroll down to near the bottom to find the section on towels and table linens etc.

Denise in Calgary

[boltonia51]

great references La Cole and Garten.You can never have too many resources for information regarding embroidery.And a placement chart is probably one of the top 10 most used tools.

[Roxanne]

Thanks for the tips. So I don't need any stabilizer in the hoop?

the placement depends on what you will put on the towel. I place a name or text on the woven band and normal designs just above that depending how big they are.
And on top you need Water Soluble stabilizer.

[Roxanne]

I will check out the information on the Diamond Thread Works. Thank you.

QUOTE=gartner;222214]here is another website with a great comprehensive Placement Chart for many articles including Towels.
At the bottom you can click a link to print the chart out.

http://www.diamondthreadworks.com/placement_chart.htm

Scroll down to near the bottom to find the section on towels and table linens etc.

Denise in Calgary[/QUOTE]

[windstar]

Thanks for the placement chart links. Very useful info there.

[watermelon]

here is another website with a great comprehensive Placement Chart for many articles including Towels.
At the bottom you can click a link to print the chart out.

http://www.diamondthreadworks.com/placement_chart.htm

Scroll down to near the bottom to find the section on towels and table linens etc.

Denise in Calgary

Thanks bunches for this link for the placement charts. Many items I've wondered about and many I've guessed at and had a train wreck. These charts will be very helpful and useful.

[gartner]

Roxanne
What embroidery machine do you have?

You could use a cut away for best results.
You might get away with using a medium weight Tear Away.

There is a very good tutorial on the Embroidery Library in the Project section where they compared using a cut away, a tear away and wate soluble as the stabilizer behind the towel.
Go to this link and scroll down near the bottom of the page and on the left side of the page click on Show All Techniques under the section Techniques and Guides.

Once on the All Technique page scroll down to find the tutorial on Embroiderying on Towels. It is the very first one on the 11 th row down.

http://www.embroiderylibraryprojects.com/

Depending how thick your towels are it would be good to hoop them for embroidering along with your stabilizer.

If they are too thick then hoop the stabilizer and machine baste the towel to the stabilizer to hold it in place if your machine has the baste feature on it.
There are some free basting stitches available to download on some other websites that you could first stitch and then stitch your design if your machine won't do this.

Just start a new thread asking help to find the basting stitches here on the forum and I am sure someone will help you find them to download.
I can not remember the websites these are on. LOL.

Otherwise pin the towel to the stabilizer at the very edge of the hoop out of the way of where your machine will be embroidering the design.

Use a water soluble topping, - light weight solvy - which is the plastic looking type, on top of the towel to hold the nap out of the way while you embroider the design.

Hope this helps you.
Denise in Calgary

[Roxanne]

You rock with the help Denise! I will check out the websites before diving into my towel projects. I have a Husqvarna embroidery machine. I think I like the idea of the Ultra Solvy (plastic like) so that the stabilizer will disappear with washing. I want to put a dense design on the towels so it should be okay. I will practice with a towel first...LOL had some bloopers before. Thanks for all the suggestions!

[gartner]

Roxanne

Just remember that if you use the ultra Solvy as the main stabilizer on the back it will wash out and there will be no stabilizer under the stitches to support them.
After a few washings the design will not look as good and towels tend to get washed often!

If you are using a dense design you should use a medium weight cut away.
If you don't parts of your design may not stitch out right or line up where they should.


Also remember to use a light weight topping on top of the towel when you embroider.
You could use a light weight solvy for the topping.

Perhaps after testing with the ultra solvy as a backing stabilizer you should wash the test towel a few times and see what happens to your design.

Good luck!

Denise in Calgary

[Rika]

Good day. I usually use the tear away stabilizer under and Avalon on top.