Feed Dogs

Okay, never mind. After some experimenting I see the feed dogs aren't engaged when the embroidery attachment is attached.

I've been going along fine, but then I had to get a different sticky tear-away for these t-shirts, and since then, I'm having trouble with the design lying flat after it's stitched. The sticky seems to have a lot more "give" to it than what I had before. I'm sure I'm not stretching the t-shirt, but I guess the stretch on the sticky is the problem.

I've got the sticky tight on the hoop, put the t-shirt on top of that, and then cut-away behind it.

But --

Something else that's happening is that everything is nice and tight and flat when I start, but as it stitches, the t-shirt is puffing up to the right and bottom, so by the time it's done, there's a pretty noticeable sag there in the drape from the design. And the pattern tends to curl in on itself a bit, too.

What I *really* don't get is why everyone tells me, "Oh, that's fine"

-- but it's obviously not!

This wasn't happening before, but I'm not sure what to do. This is the only sticky I have -- and I have a *ton* of it.

Is there something else I should be looking at? Or is this probably "it?"

I've never used sticky stabilizer, but when I do t-shirts I lay the tearaway stabilizer on the bottom hoop, put the t-shirt on top, making sure it isn't stretched, then the soluble stabilizer on top. I put the top hoop on very carefully, and there's no chance of the material stretching because of being sandwiched between 2 unstretchable components.

If the design curls, I find it's because the embroidery is dense, and it isn't usually a problem afterwards. If it isn't satisfactory I make sure not to use that design for a t-shirt again.

I often find embroidery designs rather dense, because I can use only a small design. I always imagine these days the designs are made for the bigger hoops, and imperfectly reduced.

Just the input of a very amateur user.

Joyce in RSA.