Push/Pull Compensation

Push/Pull Effect

Imagine that you have carefuly planned and digitized your design. When you finally stitch the file and see the result, you notice gaps between the color blocks. This is incredibly disappointing. All your hard work and everything seems to be distorted. This happens because each stitch will distort the fabric. There will be some shrinking (pulling) and expansion (pushing) of the fabric with every stitch.

Push describes fabric being pushed outward, often when dense stitches pack into an area and spread the fabric along the edges. Pull describes fabric being drawn inward, often along the direction of the stitches, where the fabric and stabilizer get tugged as the machine lays down thread.

Push/Pull Compensation

As the machine embroiders, the stitches pull on the fabric, which can throw off the alignment of stitched elements. To make your design come out the target size, you have to design files to compensate. To account for the push/pull effect and make your elements line up correctly, you can either embroider one color on top of another, or embroider two or more adjacent areas, but have the areas overlap.

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

• fabric
• stabilizer
• design size
• stitch type/length/density
• 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.