Embroidery Challenges – Part 2

Hello Everybody…

Spring is in the air and I have to be honest, I have ants in my pants, I want to go outside and play!  This time of year in Phoenix we enjoy “Chamber of Commerce” weather.  I can look out my window and see perfect spring days calling to me.  In just four weeks or so we will be in +100 degree temperatures every day for the next  3 to 4 months so now is the time to get out and enjoy it.  

 Last month’s blog on Embroidery Challenges  https://www.qdigitizing.com/blog/?p=825 seemed to resonate with many of you who follow my posts.  Most months I am lucky to get one or two comments but last month I received well over a dozen emails, more than a few phone calls and several comments on the blog site. No one has ever called me about a blog I wrote, this shocked me!

Because of this I am going to expand on this topic and discuss a one more challenge we get faced with at least a couple of times a week.  As much as I love embroidery there are some art projects that are (at least in my opinion) not well suited to embroidery.  For this blog I am going to tell you what I think rather than what I know.  However, it must be understood, this is my opinion only and there might be digitizers out in the world who can do a superior job with these type of projects.  If you are out there and reading this, please by all means contact me, I want to offer you a job.

 The number one challenge I don’t have a solution for is – Photographs of people where the intent is to make the people look photo-realistic.   It seems like no matter how hard we try, the people do not look good.  This doesn’t mean my digitizers are not talented (they are), the fact is, embroidery does not have the resolution to effectively convert a photograph of a person in to what I feel is an attractive embroidered piece.  Before I go on, I want to qualify this…Those of you who have been around for a while may remember an award winning, embroidered design of Elvis Presley (by Balboa Stitch – see below) as Elvis was portrayed on a US postage stamp.  However – it should be noted – the source art was an illustration, not a photograph.  It is my opinion this design would not have looked nearly as good had the source image been a photograph.  I could be wrong, but again – anyone who can prove me wrong, please; I have a job for you.

I really don’t want to show you the design below but I have to illustrate my point.  This design was digitized by my team and rejected by our customer who wrote, “We just recently had a chance to sew out the R & S Kids logo.  This was a personal Design, it is my sister and I.  I was going to sew it out and give it to her for her Birthday but after several attempts it sewed out so Bad we just gave up and threw it away.” 

Anyone who knows me knows this kind of comment breaks my heart.  There is nothing I hate more than to disappoint a customer to this level.  But the reality is, the source art was not really appropriate for a  6 inch wide design.  Could we have done better?  Of course, there is always room for improvement but this customer was so disappointed they gave up without asking for any changes.  But the truth is, I don’t think we could have done anything to satisfy what the customer had in his mind when he requested this be digitized.  Our art form simply does not have the resolution to capture the beauty of the photograph in the manner I feel the customer was looking for.

Everyone at Qdigitizing wants to do a good job for you.  We would never intentionally do a bad job.  However, each of us has a role in the process.  If your customer presents you with a photograph of people and asks you to get it embroidered you should have a frank conversation with them about how embroidery may not be the best choice for what they are trying to achieve.  For our part I have instructed my team to notify me any time we receive an order like this.  In such cases I am going to try to personally each request that comes in.  If don’t feel we can do a good job with the image I will be calling to discuss the image.

At Qdigitizing our intent is always to do the best job possible.  Sometimes, unfortunately that might mean not doing the job at all and offering you alternatives.  Photographs of “objects” can be successfully digitized by a skilled artisan but capturing the essence of a person is something entirely different if the intent is to provide photo-realism.   If it were entirely up to me I would discourage almost 100% of these types of requests.  The only exception would be is when the end user is part of the conversation and they completely understand how the output will look compared to the original.

I look forward to reaching out to each of you next month.  Until then I hope you will comment here or send me an email about any topic you would like me to address in the wonderful world of commercial embroidery or digitizing.

Steve Freeman
Managing Partner
Qdigitzing.com
steve.freeman@qdigitizing.com
877-733-4390