Appliqué Embroidery Digitizing

A digitizing file for a technique where a separate piece of fabric is placed on the garment and secured with a tackdown stitch, then finished with a satin-stitch border around the edge. It's used instead of solid fill embroidery for large shapes, since it uses far fewer stitches to cover the same area.

Flat embroidery fills the whole shape with stitches; appliqué covers the shape with a piece of fabric and only stitches the border. That makes it far more efficient for large designs — a jacket-back logo that would need tens of thousands of stitches as solid fill needs a fraction of that as appliqué. Puff is a different technique entirely, using foam underlay for a raised 3D look rather than a fabric piece.

Bold, simple shapes with clean outlines — large letters, jacket-back logos, mascots, and multi-piece designs where each color is its own fabric piece. Fine inner detail doesn't appliqué well, since the fabric piece itself is a solid color or pattern.

Pre-shrunk, colorfast twill, felt, or canvas are the most common choices — they resist puckering and won't bleed color onto the base garment during production or washing. Tell us your preferred fabric during the quote, or we'll recommend one based on the design.

$10 per design under 5 inches, $18 over 5 inches — the same flat-rate pricing as our standard digitizing, with no premium for the appliqué technique.

A placement/tackdown file to position and secure the fabric piece, a cutting template for the appliqué fabric, and the final satin-border file that covers the raw edge. Multi-piece designs include a registration guide for combining pieces accurately.

3–5 hour turnaround, the same as our standard flat-embroidery digitizing.

Yes — appliqué commonly handles the large base shape while flat embroidery adds fine text, numbers, or detail on top of or around the fabric piece. Mixed designs are delivered as separate files with a registration guide.