Contrasting the color of thread and welt allows you to add different design elements to your finished products.
Foam considerations
At Canvas Designers Inc., we use everything from ¼-inch up to ¾-inch foam thicknesses. Most automotive products use ¼-inch but the increased thickness of the foam can change the whole look of a design’s depth. We personally use ½-inch as our standard thickness and go down to 3/8-inch or ¼-inch only when we have a very small pattern and are looking to have a flattering look. All four foams we use have a tricot backing already applied to them.
Our machine has the largest sewing area of its type available in the U.S. We can continuously sow a panel area of 52 by 54 inches with our ZSK and embed embroidery anywhere within this same area.
Available patterns
Three-dimensional foams, pattern variety, thread colors, and embedded embroidery offer fabricators a new palette of design elements to enhance their finished products.
An important element to your quilt design can be the thread portion of the job. With this type of quilt stitching, the thread is exposed at the surface of the panel. The size and color of the thread can contribute to the final look of your finished product. Using complementary or contrasting thread to the color of the fabric allows you to achieve different design effects in your finished products.
As we have seen in the automotive industry, thread size can even play a part in the finished look. Everyone has seen sports cars with seats topstitched in bright fluorescent-colored large-diameter threads.
Adding quilting to cushion surfaces lends an element of luxury to the finished products.
Canvas Designers has invested in equipment over time to align with the demands of the market when it comes to quilting stitching. We quickly realized that the throat limitation on our sewing machine made it very difficult to do any larger-sized patterns.
Since we were already making custom comforters and bedspreads in our shop, we have a Gammill Statler®stitcher in our facility. Our Gammill was both a manual hand-guided machine and a computer-driven CNC machine. While it is typically used with lightweight thread to quilt bedding, we were able to get it to sew the larger threads required for quilt stitching and to do a decent job on the basic diamond patterns without a lot of effort.
Our ZSK CNC sewing table offers high-speed digital sewing with embedded embroidery with the largest panel size available in the industry at 51 by 54 inches.
Anticipating market demand
As demand for more intricate patterns and designs continued, we upgraded to our ZSK CNC embroidery machine.
Our machine has the largest sewing area of its type available in the U.S. We can continuously sew a panel area of 51 by 54 inches with our ZSK and embed embroidery anywhere within this same area. This capability gives us an infinite number of design elements that now allow us to build unique and high-end upholstery products that many of our competitors are not capable of producing.
It has also opened an opportunity to produce these panels for other shops and has allowed us to expand our workload to keep the machine busy doing our retail work as well as wholesale work.
Quilt stitching can be found in products on the inside and outside of boats.
Upholstery designs change just like the fashion industry, but quilt stitching is the newest trend and one that will be here for a while, so jump on board and add some creativity to your next project. Whether you’re hand-guiding, outsourcing, or looking for your next equipment investment, this is an element of design that allows you to add tremendous value to your finished products.
EZ2CY Cleaner & Polish 7oz $18.00
Sunfly Poles - Shade poles $495.00
