Push/Pull Compensation

Push/Pull Effect

You have carefuly planned and digitized your design. But when you finally send your project to your machine to see the result, there might be a dissappointment. You notice gaps between the color blocks and everything seems to be distorted. This happens, because each stitch will distort the fabric. There will be some shrinking (pulling) and expansion (pushing) going on. The pulling will occur on the sides with needle penetrations, while the pushing will be on the opposite sites.

Push/Pull Compensation

Plan the sizes accordingly to the distortion. If you want to create the rectangle on the left side, you have to leave a gap on both sides where the fabric gets pushed and overlap on the other sides to compensate the pull effect.

For the actual amount of compensation, there is a lot of things to consider:

• fabric
• stabilizer
• design size
• stitch type/length
• underlay stitches
• hoop(-ing)
• machine speed

It might need a lot of testing to get the right compensation. Best way is to test sew with same conditions as you planned your finished design and finetune your shapes after you’ve seen the result.