How to choose your embroidered fleece or jacket
Choosing a fleece or jacket to embroider can seem a mammoth task on first sight. With a huge range of brands to choose from and many different styles, fabrics and colours, it can be a difficult process to focus in on your selection to one garment that most accurately meets your embroidered fleece or jacket requirements.
This guide has been written to help you with your decision for embroidering a fleece or jacket and to help you make the right choice in selecting an appropriate fleece or jacket to apply your embroidered logo.
First things first, we need to consider the embroidered logo. Fleece fabric can take the form of many different guises, from smooth softshell to heavy pilled fleece cloth. Embroidery is simple stitches that are applied directly onto the garment. Therefore, often the smoother the fleece the easier it will be to embroider and the better the effect of the finish on the embroidered fleece. Softshell fabric is ideal in this way as it is very smooth to the touch and provides a flat surface on which to embroider.
Jackets on the other hand come in many different fabrics and each one provides its own unique characteristics that affect the way in which it can be embroidered. For example, a smooth nylon fabric gives a good base to stitch the embroidered logo onto whereas a quilted jacket may not have the flat surface area on which an embroidered logo can be applied.
Another consideration is the size of the logo itself and more specifically the number of stitches it contains. More stitches equals more weight so we need to be careful that the embroidered logo is not too heavy for the fabric as this may distort the shape of the jacket. An average size left chest logo is approximately 5000 stitches in total. This would provide a good size embroidery that would fit nicely onto the left chest of most fleeces or jackets. The same size logo with many infill stitches could increase the size of the embroidery to 8000 to 10,000 stitches. In general most jackets are made from heavy enough fabric to hold most embroidered logos. It should only be something you will need to consider if you are putting a large logo onto the front or the rear of your fleece or jacket.
What fabric weights are fleeces and jackets available in? Basically, any weight. There is such a range of garments from lightweight shower jackets to full blown winter parkas that it would be impossible to state the average weight of a fleece of jacket.
Next is the style of the fleece or jacket. We have a number of different styles from which to choose and the world is your oyster when it comes to selecting a jacket for your embroidery. The main thing to consider to the location of your logo and will it fit onto the jacket you have chosen. Often pockets cannot be embroidered onto without stitching through the jacket itself, therefore making the pocket useless as it will be stitched up. As we are a primarily an embroidery specialist many of the fleeces and jackets we supply have embroidery frame access points which allows us to access the outer shell of the garment so we can attach an embroidery frame and only stitch onto the outer fabric of the jacket.
The third point is the fabric. We will discuss fabric choice in a separate article, but suffice to say fabric is an important factor when deciding which fleece or jacket to embroider onto.
The next point is something that you may wish to consider and that’s the brand of your embroidered fleece or jacket. Will the brand of fleece or jacket be around in the same style and colour in 6 or 12 months time? This is important if your embroidered fleece is going to be a garment you will need to re-order for staff uniform or a future event. You will need to pick a brand that will manufacture your chosen jacket in the future so you can get a consistent garment for your logo.
Final point is the price. We have left this point last as in our experience it is often the deciding factor when selecting an embroidered fleece.As you would expect with a large choice comes a large price range. Price can be affected by many things, fabric, style, weight and brand. The other cost involved will obviously be the application of the embroidery onto your garment. An embroidery charge is based on the number of stitches within your logo or text and is priced per 1000 stitches. Therefore, the smaller the embroidery, the cheaper the price.
So, which fleece and jacket brands do we recommend at JKL Clothing? Over the last 20 years we have seen many brands come and go within the embroidered fleece industry. There are 3 main exceptions to this which are Fruit of the Loom, Regatta and Result. In our experience these brands offer the consistency, quality and value that make for an ideal choice when looking to purchase an embroidered sweatshirt.
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