Episode 12: Embroidery Terms You Need To Know
In this episode of the Embroidery Prophet Podcast, Hope Yoder reveals 20 essential embroidery terms into plain, jargon-free language to help beginners and commercial embroiderers navigate the craft.
Throat Plate & Bobbin: The metal plate above the hoop and the silver thread case below, both essential for making a stitch.
Rotary Hook: A spinning part inside the machine that catches the top thread.
Hooping & Mighty Hoop: Securing fabric tightly; "Mighty Hoop" is a popular brand of magnetic hoops.
Tension: The balance of how tightly the top and bottom threads lock together.
Essential MaterialsStabilizer (Backing): Placed under the fabric to prevent stretching and puckering.
Topper: Placed on top of the fabric so stitches don't sink into it.
Thread: Needs special high-shine thread; durable polyester is preferred commercially over weaker rayon.
Placement & DigitizingFlats vs. Hats: Flat items (like shirts) versus tubular items (like caps).
LC (Left Chest): A standard logo placement on the wearer's left side.
Digitizing: Converting artwork into machine stitches; manual digitizing is highly preferred over automatic.
Stitches & TechniquesStitch Types: Run (outlines), Satin (borders), Fill (solid areas), and Underlay (hidden foundation stitches).
Trim vs. Jump: Trims cut the thread automatically, while jump stitches leave loose threads that you must cut by hand.
Patches & Appliqué: Woven (stitched on fabric), freestanding (stitched on stabilizer), and appliqué (using fabric pieces to reduce stitch count).
Grab the free SOS - Stitchout guide for quick fixes for UGLY LEFT CHEST LOGOS
https://hopeyoder.myflodesk.com/guide
Learn the embroidery terms every beginner and growing embroidery business owner needs to know—without the confusing jargon.
In this episode of the Embroidery Profit Podcast, Hope Yoder breaks down essential machine embroidery terminology in plain English so you can understand your equipment, communicate confidently with digitizers and customers, and avoid expensive production mistakes.
You’ll learn what terms like throat plate, rotary hook, bobbin, tension, hooping, backing, topper, digitizing, stitch count, and jump stitches actually mean—and why they matter for clean, professional embroidery.
In this video, you’ll learn
- What a throat plate, rotary hook, and bobbin do
- How to identify and prevent embroidery tension issues
- The difference between hooping, magnetic hoops, flats, and hats
- What “left chest” and “full back” embroidery placement mean
- Backing vs. stabilizer—and when to use topper
- Why embroidery thread weight matters
- Polyester vs. rayon embroidery thread
- What digitizing and punching mean
- Why manual digitizing produces better embroidery results than auto-digitizing
- How stitch count and color stops affect pricing and production time
- The difference between trims and jump stitches
- Common stitch types: run stitch, satin stitch, steil stitch, fill stitch, density, and underlay
- Woven patches, freestanding patches, and appliqué explained
Whether you just bought your first embroidery machine, are learning commercial embroidery, or want to run a more efficient embroidery business, this episode will give you the vocabulary to make better decisions and troubleshoot with confidence.Ep-12-Embroidery-Terms-You-Need-To-Know.txt
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction: embroidery terms made simple
00:33 Throat plate and bird’s nests
01:13 Rotary hook and bobbin
02:18 Embroidery tension
02:46 Hooping basics
03:14 Mighty Hoops and magnetic hooping
04:25 Flats vs. hats
05:06 Left chest and full back placement
06:28 Backing vs. stabilizer
07:26 What is embroidery topper?
08:32 Knockdown stitches and nap blockers
09:32 Embroidery thread and thread weight
10:28 Polyester vs. rayon thread
10:47 Digitizing and punching
11:25 Manual digitizing vs. auto-digitizing
12:14 Stitch count and embroidery pricing
12:45 Color stops and color sorting
13:40 Trims vs. jump stitches
15:16 Run stitch, satin stitch, and steil stitch
16:08 Fill stitch and density
17:06 Underlay stitches
17:48 Woven patches and freestanding patches
19:13 Appliqué embroidery
Subscribe for practical embroidery education, production tips, machine embroidery troubleshooting, and strategies to help you create better products and build a more profitable embroidery business.
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#EmbroideryTerms #MachineEmbroidery #EmbroideryBusiness #EmbroideryBeginner #EmbroideryDigitizing #CommercialEmbroidery #EmbroideryTips #EmbroideryProfitPodcast
WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, everyone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My name's Hope Yoder.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And this is The Embroidery Profit Podcast.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever heard embroidery terms?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you just had no idea what they meant.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them was talking to you and you just nodded along.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And all you heard was, well today we're gonna fix that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna talk about 20 embroidery terms in plain language, no jargon and no judgment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So save this episode.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if it helps you, it just might help a friend who has a machine.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The first term is throw plate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's the little metal plate that goes right above where the hoop goes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When you load your hoop onto the machine, there's a metal plate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you unscrew it, then all the magic shows up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's the throat plate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now you may hear the term bird's nest talking about throat plate and bird's nest is one of those terrible disasters that happens to us all where you get a tangled mess of thread that gets caught underneath the hoop and jammed down into the throat plate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Go back and listen to the previous episode where we have a full fix for that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The next term is a rotary hook.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of sounds like a networking event like the rotary club.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, not really, but anyway, rotary hook is the little thing inside of the Bob and housing that spins.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It catches the top thread and it loops it around the bottom that's where needles go to die when you break them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Again, we talked about that in the last segment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Also in the rotary hook, this is the place where you give it a little drop of oil or spray of oil and then you can push the reset button on your commercial machine the rotary hook will turn evenly distributing the bobbin.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that brings us to the bobbin.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's the little silver case that snaps in underneath the throat plate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where all the magic happens without a bobbin in there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You wouldn't be able to form a stitch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So the next one we're going to talk about the next term is tension.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And tension is how tightly the top and a bobbin thread interlock.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you have proper tension, you're going to have clean stitches on the top and on the bottom, but if your tension is wrong, you're going to have saggy threads, you're going to have puckering and loops.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now the next term is hooping, and a lot of times this seems very simple, but in the beginning, people don't understand what that means.
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[SPEAKER_00]: in a hoop.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, your machine comes with embroidery hoops so you can use those and you're going to place backing or stabilize or underneath the hoop and sometimes a top or on top of the hoop and you're going to sandwich them all together and hoop it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The goal is to have it taught, no wrinkles, no sags, just evenly taught.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that's the term whooping.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A term that really isn't a term, but you're going to hear me talking about a lot, is mighty whoop.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, mighty whoop is like everybody calling a soda coke.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When Coke really is a brand name, so is mighty hoop.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's made from my friends from Midwest.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, mighty hoop has become a generic term as well, which is magnetic hoops.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's easier to hoops something if you're not using the hoops that come with your machine and you're using magnetic hoops.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why I think it's better is it's always going to give you even tension
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[SPEAKER_00]: And more importantly, something that people don't know that's a total game changer is the mighty hoop is going to allow you to a position this logo in the same place.
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[SPEAKER_00]: shirt after shirt.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're embroidery 100 shirts, you're going to want to make sure that each logo is in the same place, not higher and lower.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the mighty whooping station is going to do that for you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So be sure to check that out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll leave links in the show notes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The next term is flats.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you hear the term flats and hats.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just talk about the first term flat.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's easy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's anything that you're gonna embroider flat.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So my polo, a tote bag, a jacket, probably anything except for a hat.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now that takes us to the next term, hats, you'll hear flats and hats, hats doesn't just mean a baseball cap.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It means anything tubular that you're going to use the hat frame or the hat jig for it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it could be a Richardson hat, it could be a trucker hat, it could be a visor, it could be one of those nice hats that you were fishing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to caution you, you guys in broader, learn to embroider flats well before you jump into hats.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All right, next term is LC for left chest.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm wearing and that's one of the most commonly used phrases in the embroidery commercial apparel space, all business owners and their sales team need a left chest logo.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But one thing that I know I wondered and so to all my students is left chests, like when you're looking at it or when you're wearing it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So a left chest is when you're wearing it, it should be on the left side.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's an expensive mistake you don't want to make.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
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[SPEAKER_00]: L. C. Eagles left chest full back.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's where a design is going to be maybe nine to 12 inches wide.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's going to be large and you're going to embroider it on the back of something.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now I want to caution you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The shirt I'm wearing is a Nike dry fit polo.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is not heavy enough fabric to support a full back embroidery design.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Those usually are going to go on jackets, hoodies, things that are a little thicker.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All right, you guys.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want you to get bored here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to get energized.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if you are multitasking right now, stop, put down your phone, come back to me, because these next few terms trip everyone up constantly and you're going to want to hear this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: stabilizer or backing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's our next term.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's like tomato tomato.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Good news, stabilizer and backing are the same thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A commercial embroider calls it backing, a hobbyist calls it stabilizer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What it is is a sheet of something that's going to go underneath your fabric before you
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[SPEAKER_00]: And its job is to remove the stretch and the puckering when you embroider it, but when you're done, it's going to give you that stretch and wearability back so you can wear the garment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now let's talk about the term Tapper.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Topper goes on top of your fabric and that's why it's called a topper.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's two main types.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's a water soluble topper which is industry standard for commercial embroiderers and then there's a heat away topper and as a commercial embroiderer I stop using this because it's really slows down the production but as a hobbyist I used it all the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of workarounds and hacks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When you think you need an iron away top or there's some hacks that you can do and those are the things that we teach in person the toothpick acts as a spacer and it creates a little space so that when you pull the thread through the button and into the shorts there's a little space so the button will move so when you go to button your shorts it's not so tight that you can't move it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that same concept of a spacer is what a topper is, it prevents the thread from sinking down and being pulled too tight into the fabric.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It creates a little space so that your design has some dimension.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, still talking about topper, things that have loops or a nap like a towel or a fleece or a minky blanket, instead of using a heataway topper like I used to, I used a technique that I create in my software called Knockdown or a nap blocker.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very loose density fill stitch that traps the threads and the loops from permanently poking through after it's washed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hey guys, let's take a quick break.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever thought about stabilizers and thought, man, it's a mystery I'm never gonna get this?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I wanna tell you about my online course called Stabilizer Made Simple.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the course, I'm gonna break down what each one is, when to use it and how to pair it perfectly with your design and your fabric to eliminate puckers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can find this in the show notes below or go to hopeyotor.com
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[SPEAKER_00]: let's get right back into the show.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Another term is embroidery thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to let you guys know that embroidery thread is not just any type of thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can't use all purpose thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: or quilting thread or surger thread when you embroider, you could, but you're gonna get terrible results.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Embroidery thread is a specific type of thread that has high shine, and it hopefully prevents breaking and shredding.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So make sure you're using a branded embroidery thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the next term is thread weight.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Forty weight is the most commonly used thread weight in the industry.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We also have a 60-weight and that's thinner and made for tiny small lettering.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a rule for you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The higher the number in the thread weight, the thinner the thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now let's talk about thread polyester versus rayon.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Polyester is preferred for commercial embroiderers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It has a higher tensile strength, it's color fast, and it's going to hold up wash after wash. Rayon is beautiful, but it's weaker, which means you're going to get more thread breaks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're using a bleach or something that brightens your colors, it could fade the thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, let's move on to one of my favorite subjects.
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[SPEAKER_00]: or punching.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Not punching in the face, but punching.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So those mean the same thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Punching is the same thing as digitizing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And old school digitizing, they used to have these machines that actually punched stitches.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it means the same thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the process of converting artwork, maybe a JPEG of your logo.
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[SPEAKER_00]: into embroidery stitches.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can't put a regular image into a machine and sew it out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It has to be digitized first.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that brings us to our next term, manual digitizing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This, you guys, is your BFF.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you're going to digitize yourself, you're going to do that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: don't use an auto program.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you're going to send your design off to someone, make sure you've vetted them and they have a good reputation in the industry and ask them, do you do manual digitizing?
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[SPEAKER_00]: The manual digitizing is what is ideal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that brings us to our next term auto digitizing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So auto digitizing is junk.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's where the software just in one click will spit out a design and most of the time it's junk, it's flat, it's boring, pros don't use it and pros can spot auto digitizing a mile away.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now you may have heard the term stitch count.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Stitch count is the total number of stitches in your design.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For instance, a left-chest logo could have anywhere from 3,000 to 8,000 stitches.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A large fullback design could have 50,000 stitches to 200,000 stitches.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The stitch count sometimes it can affect the pricing and it definitely affects the time how long it takes to stitch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now since we're talking about digitizing, let's talk about color stops.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When you open any embroidery software, you're gonna see something that says color stops.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that means how many times the machine stops and grabs a different color thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So the more color stops you have, the longer it's gonna take to embroider.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be number 21.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have this written down to share with you, but color sort is another technique inside of most basic embroidery programs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Back to color stops.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you have 50 color stops,
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[SPEAKER_00]: All right, that's going to take a long time to embroider.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But maybe you could use a function called color sorting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You could push a button and maybe that 50 stop goes down to 20 stops.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That means it's going to change the way the machine shows it out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of stopping it, my combine a couple colors that are still going to look good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All right, next term, trim.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is something if you've been embroidering as a hobby, you probably haven't heard this term.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Or if you did, you didn't really know what it means, but as a commercial embroiderer, super, Uber important.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A trim is where the machine has a command to tie it off in a knot and slice and dice the thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's going to cut the thread before it moves on to the next portion of the design.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Somewhere where I ask my digitizer to make a trim command is between small tiny letters or elements.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want the machine to tie off the thread in a knot so it won't unravel, cut it which means trim and then go on to the next section.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That leaves us to our next term.
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[SPEAKER_00]: White men can jump.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, nope, just said that so you'd come back to me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Jump stitch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A jump stitch is the opposite of a trim.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's where your machine just keeps on stitching, but it might hop from point A to B without trimming the thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That means you're gonna see a long loose thread on the top that you then have to go into with scissors and trim it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of jump stitches means you probably didn't ask the digitizer to tie it off, or it could just be a digitizer that isn't the best.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Move on to stitch types.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to hear some different terms like run stitch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Run stitch is like sewing on a sewing machine.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It goes back and forth, back and forth, and it's usually used in underlay or outlines.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then you have another type of stitch called a satin stitch and that's where it hops from left to right to left to right and it stitches a column of stitches.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of my favorite type of stitches.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's smooth.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's shiny.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's between two and seven millimeters.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of times it's used in lettering and borders.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then you have a steel ST-E-I-L steel stitch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And basically, that's the same thing as a satin stitch, but it's narrow.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it might be one and a half to two millimeters.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is perfect for outlines and fine details.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of the most commonly used stitches is called fill stitch, F I L L. And this is where you're going to fill in a large area with thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you can have some movement with that with different patterns and different stamps.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if your density in the fill stitches to light, you're going to see the fabric underneath, if it's to thick or to dense, it's going to be like an army patch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now that brings us to our next term, density.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That is how many stitches are in every square inch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So a light density is open and airy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you might want on Apollo.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Or a medium density is a mix of light and full coverage.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then you have super dense or just dense, which is solid, full coverage like the fill stitches.
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[SPEAKER_00]: now that brings us to the very last stitch type.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to talk about you may hear the term underlay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I always think of the cartoon when I was a kid.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Underlay, underlay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's not really what they said.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But that might help you remember.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Underlay are the hidden stitches.
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[SPEAKER_00]: that are laid down before the pretty stitches stitch on top.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So think about construction.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Rebar goes inside of concrete.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're gonna lay the rebar first before they pour the concrete, the finished concrete.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Underlay are the stitches that are like rebar.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's gonna give your design support and it's gonna help the top stitches lay a little bit better.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's the hidden hero that nobody sees,
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[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things we do a lot in our studio is I make patches, so let's talk about terms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When you're talking about patches, first is a woven patch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is where you're going to embroider your logo or your design on top of a twill fabric foundation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you're going to lay down 12 fabric, you're going to trim it, you're going to stitch your pretty design and then you're going to fuse it or sew it onto a garment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's a woven patch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then you have a free standing patch and most people get tripped up with this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: a freestanding patch means there is no fabric underneath there at all.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to be embroidering on stabilizer directly and you're going to have enough stitches so that there's no holes and nothing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can't see air through it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The freestanding patches digitize so each stitch interlocks and your design has to be digitized so that it will work with freestanding and it interlocks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Freestanding lace would be another example.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now a third type of
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[SPEAKER_00]: material or technique that you might hear is the word applique.
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[SPEAKER_00]: applique is very similar to a patch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's where you're going to fill in those large areas of spaces with fabric instead of thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason for this, sometimes it's just the aesthetics, the look, but sometimes it's because your fabric can't support heavy weight of a thousand million stitches of thread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so by using applique fabric instead of thread, you're going to get a lower stitch count.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to stitch faster and it's probably going to lay nicer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now applique you might think of sports jerseys where you have those big numbers on them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Those are generally applique designs.
19:42.415 --> 19:44.956
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey guys, we'll be right back to the show in a minute.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But did you know that I offer a hands-on embroidery school where I teach you to get your shop up and running over a weekend?
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[SPEAKER_00]: We work on real commercial machines on real project and not only am I going to train you to get your shop up and running, but I'm going to give you my entire framework and my system and workflow.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't have to spend years figuring out what you're doing wrong.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can get right back up into making money and quit staying stuck.
20:13.750 --> 20:15.890
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to see you in one of my next courses.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So the link will be in the show notes or you can go to hopeyotor.com and look under the tab courses.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Let's jump right back in.
20:25.073 --> 20:32.063
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, in conclusion, I hope that I've mentioned some terms that you didn't know what they meant, and now you do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, you can screenshot some of the show notes, send them to a friend who just got their first embroidery machine or better yet share the podcast with them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, go and use these terms with confidence.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Hope Yoder.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is the embroidery profit podcast, and I'll see you here next time.