An Ancient art of decorating a fabric, with needle and thread, is known as Embroidery. It is done not only on fabrics but other materials also for the purpose of decorating it. Initially, it was done with hands and such items were known as handicrafts. With the changing times, this art has also changed a lot. Now, it is done with the embroidery machines. Designs made with embroidery machines are used to decorate house hold linens, dress materials and for adding logos and apparels on business shirts or other fabrics.
Embroidery done with machines is of two types; one is done with the free-motion sewing machines and the other is done with the computerized sewing or embroidery machines. The free-motion sewing or embroidery machines are basically used for sewing garments by hand. Therefore, they do not have automatic functions of embroidery or sewing. This type of embroidery is time-consuming, as the free-motion machines have only one needle. Every time a new colored thread is required, the user has to re-thread it manually. The patterns and designs made by free-motion machines are unique and very difficult to reproduce again, in the same manner. Therefore, when there is a need to make same type of designs on many garments, this machine is not very helpful. The cost of fabrics embroidered by this type of machine is more than those made by computerized machines.
On the other hand, computerized embroidery machines are much easier to use. In this type of machine, pre-programmed digital patterns of embroidery are available. Therefore making garments with same embroidery patterns like monograms on shirts etc. is very easy with this machine. The fabric is also not required to be held or moved manually. These machines have a hooping or framing system that holds the fabric in the framed area tightly. It saves a lot of time and manual labor too. Hence, such embroidered fabrics or garments are less expensive than the hand-embroidered ones. Such embroidery machines have many needles for embroidery and are generally pre-threaded, thereby reducing the effort of re-threading it. It is very helpful for industrial purposes, where there is a huge demand of embroidered fabric to be produced in a short span of time. Almost all types of stitches and designs can be made by computerized machines.
Although, the hand embroidered fabrics are beautiful in their own sense and many people still prefer it over machine embroidered garments yet machine embroidery does gives us an option of a less expensive and quicker way of getting our fabrics embroidered.
