Basic Tips For Ordering Embroidered Apparel - Shirts and Jackets

Embroidery helps make lasting impression when added to shirts or jackets. It defines a brand as well leaving a top-of mind awareness for a company, group or organization.  Today, polo shirts are cut and styled for women and children as well as men.  Embroidery adds style and interest as well as communicating a silent message.

The industry standard is logo placement on the left chest and personalization on the right chest.   Designs should be small enough to fit, with visual appeal, in the available space.   The normal left-chest location for sizes medium, large and extra large shirts is 8 inches below shoulder seam and 4 inches to the side from the center.  A logo on a woman’s shirt may need to be reduced around 15% in size to display appropriately on the left chest.  The maximum width recommended for left chest designs on a polo is no more than 4”.  You should be aware that when reducing the design, the text sizes will also become smaller, perhaps too small.  Text should be no less than 3/16” in height and some fabrics may require ¼”.  Adding a design to the left sleeve adds interest as well as providing additional name recognition.  The back-side of the collar offers another location to add a unique design or message.  The area just below the collar also provides variance to logo placement.

Each fabric type has its own characteristics and may be digitized differently for the best result.  Make sure you choose an experienced company to have digitizing (computerized stitch placement design) done for you. The old term for stitch placement was “making a tape” because an actual punched tape was produced.  Today design stitch placement is digitizing.  There are many different types of fabric and thread.  When an embroidered fabric pulls and puckers, the density of the stitching is probably too much.  If fabric, unintentionally, is showing through the stitches, the stitch density is too low.  The representative you are working with should know the type of fabric in the shirt or jacket and the type of thread to be used in order to create an appealing embroidered design that sews well.

Letter and numeral size is important when creating an embroidered design.  Use capitalized letters in a sans serif font such as Arial for text under ½”, for the best results. The minimum letter height for sans serif, block letters, is 3/16” for twill and most fabrics. Pique, terry cloth and fleece require ¼” minimum height for fonts and letters.