Designing for cording

Cording designs are made up of running stitch outlines. Bear in mind:

Create the design with run stitching to define the cording pattern.

Run stitching may cross over itself or other objects in a continuous fashion. It is best to avoid long runs of overlapping cord.

However, cording should be, as much as possible, continuous, as the cord cannot be trimmed by machine trimmer, only by hand.

Consequently, any disconnected cording sections must be digitized in different colors so the machine will stop to allow for manual trimming.

It is ok to have sharp corners but avoid extremes.

It is possible to combine regular embroidery and cording in the same design.

Conversely, it is possible to create cording-only designs with no other embroidery stitching.

Producing cording on the machine

To perform cording in combination with embroidery...

Stitch data from the design file stops the machine as required. On the production worksheet, a ‘Stop’ is displayed with an additional color swatch indicating ‘CORD’. This prompts the machine operator to switch to cording.

Choose an embroidery thread to stitch the cord to the fabric – either a matching color, contrasting color, or see-through thread.

The machine stitches the design automatically, with the cord being fed through the cording device, in shapes defined by the stitch data.

At the end of a section of cording, the machine stops so that you can trim the cord.

When Cording is applied, a Cord In/Out function is inserted into the stitch sequence. Some machines have a specific Cording function which is output when saving to machine file – e.g. Barudan FDR-3 file format or Schiffli machines that support cording. For machines that don’t have an explicit Cording function, the software outputs a Stop code.

During production, the needle penetrates either side of the cord, not through the center. As a consequence, the cord is pushed one way or the other.

Relevant production information is also recorded on the design worksheet:

Cord size and color

Length of cord required

The stop sequence shows when to start cording, trim cording, and end cording.

Products

EmbroideryStudio

WilcomWorkspace Studio

WilcomWorkspace Estimator

Embroidery Web API

Hatch Embroidery

EmbroideryStudio add-ons