Embroidering with foam, known as puff or puffy embroidery, is a form of stumpwork---an embroidery style characterized by raised stitches that give designs or design components a 3D effect. As this type of embroidery is performed on an automated digital embroidery machine, little work is required beyond the initial setup. You must select a digital stitch design compatible with puff foam, make certain that the machine has a sharp needle capable of penetrating the foam and color-match your thread to the foam so that the foam is less noticeable if seen between stitches.
Instructions
1. Program your puff foam-compatible design---typically a design that incorporates wide satin stitching on some or all of the design---into your embroidery machine and thread the machine with matching thread.
2. Insert a sharp needle(s) into the machine and thread the machine with your color-matched thread.
3. Prepare your fabric in the machine's embroidery hoop.
4. Hold your first foam piece over your embroidery hoop and cut in a square or rectangular shape in a size that fits right inside the hoop and then set the piece aside. If using several different colors of foam, repeat with the other pieces.
5. Put your hoop inside your machine and embroider the non-foam sections of the design if applicable. If the design doesn't have non-foam sections as sometimes seen with logos, skip this step.
6. Place your foam on top of the fabric inside the hoop and set your machine to embroider the entire design or a section of the design depending on whether your design has several puff foam embroidered areas.
7. Pull the foam gently from the fabric until only the puffed design on the fabric is showing when the machine has finished embroidering the area. Repeat with additional pieces of foam in other sections as your design dictates.
8. Remove any pieces of foam sticking out between the threads with tweezers when finished or put on a mask and heat the sections lightly with a heat gun or hair dryer set to LOW so that the foam will melt slightly---pulling behind the threads.
Tags: embroidery hoop, embroidery machine, inside hoop, machine embroider, machine thread, machine thread machine, machine with
