The Embroidery Column
Giving your embroidery the right foundation
Big fluffy garments may look nice, but they can be a pain to get the right embroidery decoration on. Happily, Liz Woodhouse, owner of the Embroidery Academy, has a solution which may help those designs pop.
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f you’ve ever embroidered onto a lovely soft fleece, a chunky knitted beanie or anything with a deep, fluffy pile, you’ll know it can sometimes be a little tricky. You can spend ages getting your embroidery design just right, only to find that once it’s stitched out, parts of it have disappeared into the fabric. It can be so frustrating.
This is where laydown stitches can really help. Laydown stitching is a simple but very useful technique for giving your embroidery a good, stable foundation. It’s particularly helpful when working with fabrics that are deep, fluffy, uneven or loosely knitted.
Think beanies, open knitwear, fleece, Sherpa fleece and towelling all those lovely fabrics that can be a bit of a challenge to embroider.
What exactly is a laydown stitch?
Put simply, a laydown stitch is a fill stitch sewn at a very open density.
The idea isn’t to create a thick, solid layer of stitching. Instead, the stitches gently hold down the fibres of the fabric and create a smoother surface for your main embroidery to sit on. And, as with so many things in embroidery, it’s all about getting the balance right.
If your laydown is too dense, you could end up with an embroidery that feels stiff, heavy and overworked. But if it’s too sparse, it may not do enough to hold those fibres down, and your beautiful design can still disappear into the pile.
Every fabric is different
There really isn’t one magic setting that works perfectly for every fabric.
A lovely deep Sherpa fleece, for example, will need more help than a flatter fleece. A chunky knitted beanie may need a completely different approach again.
This is also where a good embroidery digitiser can make a real difference. When you have your original embroidery design created, let your digitiser know what type of fabric you intend to embroider it onto. You can also ask them to include laydown stitches as part of the original digitising.
A good digitiser can take the fabric into consideration when creating the design and adjust the laydown, underlay and other stitch settings accordingly. This can save you having to try and add support to the design afterwards.
That’s why I always think it’s worth doing a little test first. If you have a scrap of the actual fabric, use it. A few minutes spent testing your laydown can save you a lot of time and possibly a very disappointing finished garment. You’ll soon get a feel for how much support each type of fabric needs.
Don’t forget the thread colour.
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There’s another little detail that can make a surprisingly big difference: the colour of your laydown thread.
Where possible, try to choose a thread colour that is close to the fabric.
When the laydown is done well, you really shouldn’t notice it. It should quietly do its job underneath the embroidery without drawing attention to itself.
The aim is for the finished design to look as though it belongs on the garment, rather than looking like a little badge that has simply been stitched on top.
It’s also a good idea to keep the laydown following the shape of your embroidery design.
Ideally, it only needs to extend a millimetre or two beyond the edge of the main design. There’s no need to make the supporting layer much larger than necessary. Keeping that border small helps the laydown disappear neatly into the fabric while still giving your embroidery the support it needs.
Let your software do some of the work
Some software packages, including Wilcom, can automatically create a laydown stitch from an existing EMB or DST file. This can be a real time-saver. Instead of sitting there manually tracing around the whole design, the software can work out the shape for you and generate the supporting stitches.
You can then adjust the settings to suit the particular fabric you’re working with.
You might change the density, decide whether one or two layers are needed, and adjust the border margin until you’re happy with the coverage.
Another useful option is being able to leave holes in the negative areas of the design without laydown stitching. This can save unnecessary stitches and make the supporting layer even more discreet.
Good embroidery isn’t just about the design itself – it’s about making sure the stitches work with the fabric. Get that foundation right, and your embroidery has a much better chance of looking clean, sharp and beautifully finished.
November 2026 | 63 | Laydown stitch on the bottom of design
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