Common Causes and Solutions for Gaping in Machine Embroidery

This is a disheartening thing about machine embroidery when a piece fails. As we spend money on fabric, designs, materials, and time, It will very painful if fail. An embroidered piece with gaping, shifting, or spaces in the embroidery looks normal. Don’t give up your work. There are four main causes of gaping. It also needs a little time, materials, and ingenuity.

The Main Causes of Poor Registration

• Matching the stabilizer and fabric.

• Slipping in the hooped fabric or not hooping.

• Bobbin tension is too tight.

• Obstruction of the hoop.

You can read more about the main problems for embroidery digitizing here.

Too Much or Too Little Stabilizer Can Cause Problems

If you will not use a stabilizer with your fabric, the design looks fade. You should make every stitch pull in every way — up, down, left, and right. If you stretch under the weight and tension of the stitches, the result will gape and shifting. The cutaway stabilizer does a great job by holding the fabric nice. If no stabilizer used, your design can fail.

In which piece you will not use a stabilizer, it would fail. The cutaway stabilizer will do the best job when working with wildlife or animal embroidery designs. Wildlife designs have a lot of stitches for the layering and shading. As you embroider the design, the needle for embroidery perforates the fabric and stabilizer over-and-over-and-over. Until nothing left to support the fabric, the tear-away stabilizer gets weaker. Today there are many, many brands of stabilizer on the market. When trying to find the right one, it can be a little overwhelming. Using too much stabilizer can also cause gaping.

Using two pieces of cutaway, or two pieces of tear-away, or one of each to make sure they have all their bases covered. That will also cause gaping. The needle working through so many layers gets dull fast. It means it moves the fibbers around more and more with each perforation.

If you are not hooping enough, it can result in gaping. It means how stitches add weight to a piece of fabric. And also it means how stabilizer helps to support the fabric.  As each stitch makes on the fabric, the fabric’s physical reaction is to contract under the weight. You may see gaping and shift if you’re hooping the stabilizer, but not the fabric.

Your hoop has weak spots even if you hoop everything. The weak spot in the lower-left corner if you have a rectangular hoop.

You’re most likely to find the problem in that area of machine embroidery, if the fabric hooped, or slipping in the hoop.