Embroidery Sewing Machine ---- How They Work

A Brief History

Embroidery is considered to be the most delicate part of sewing. Skilled craftsmen turned simple and plain pieces of cloth to masterpieces through embroidery. In earlier days women from all ranks of society and culture were taught the art of embroidery right from childhood. Tailors who perfected the art were in great demand in fashionable society.

With the advancement of science, came the age of industrial embroidery machines. The pioneers who tried to make a workable embroidery sewing machine were Thomas Stone along with James Henderson and Scott John Duncan. Though they took patents on machines that they claimed mimicked hand embroidery, they were unable to deliver one. It was left to Isaak Groebli who merged hand looming techniques with the existing sewing machine technology to give the world its first embroidery sewing machine in the year 1860.

The next boost came when in 1911 Singer Sewing Company launched their multi-head embroidery sewing machine with six heads along with which a pantograph was attached. Since, 1950s the technology advanced with leaps and bounds with the coming of computer technology. In 1980, Wilcom introduced the first computer aided designing system, which ran on a mini-computer. In 1982 he enhanced the system, which allowed several users to simultaneously work on different parts of a single design. It further streamlined production time for embroidered garments.

The Present Scenario

Today industrial embroidery sewing machines are so advanced that they can do different types of embroidery simultaneously with many spools of thread. They are automatic and need little or no supervision at all. The computer aided ones can be programmed to do a full design. They are now smaller in size and do not take up the whole rooms space as the earlier industrial embroidery sewing machines did. Now it is possible for small businessmen to run embroidery units from their home with minimum space. This has further boosted the ready-made garment industry.

Like the industrial embroidery sewing machine, home embroidery machines have also undergone vast changes. Even novice seamstresses or persons just starting to learn sewing can do variety of stitches with minimum effort. You can also buy such attachments after mastering your machine and acquiring required skills. With computer aided embroidery sewing machine for home become cheaper and readily available, hobbyists can create their own designer clothes at home. All they have to do is use software that reads a pre-designed file and transfers that design to the garment. Every other aspect like which color to use and the outline of the drawing are monitored by the machines software.

Today it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell whether embroidery is by hand or by machine, so fine is the work done by a good quality embroidery sewing machine.

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