How to Embroider A Baseball Cap Using A Durkee Cap Frame
Embroidering on baseball caps requires a special set of tools. With the right accessories and materials, though, you can sew any design onto your favorite hat. We’re going to tell you all about the best tools for embroidery on baseball caps — and where to find them! The following content also has some reference value for Eagle Digitizing.
Why embroider on a baseball cap
Baseball caps are a popular choice for headwear because they are comfortable, practical and fashionable. Children and adults wear them
However, looking around, you will find that almost every baseball cap has some kind of embroidery design or logo on the front.
Embroidery on baseball caps can let you express your personal style, make unique gifts for friends and family or show team spirit. If you have an embroidery machine, you can equip everyone in your family with personalized hats, which will stand out from the crowd.
Challenge of Embroidering on Baseball Caps
Unfortunately, baseball caps can be difficult to embroider. The baseball cap is curved and your embroidery area is flat. In addition, the brim of a baseball cap and the pesky fabric inner flap (sweatband) may interfere. Baseball cap materials can also challenge embroidery. It is usually thick and hard, which is difficult to pierce with embroidery needles.
For these reasons, many people completely avoid embroidering on baseball caps.
However, if you are in the embroidery business, it is a missed opportunity to avoid baseball cap embroidery. Baseball caps are cheap, and adding embroidery on the front (and/or even the sides and back) will greatly increase their value. You can easily sell blank baseball caps for $20-30 with some custom embroidery for $5-7.
Baseball cap embroidery solution
Fortunately, there are various solutions to help you embroider your baseball cap.
Cylindrical hoop on multi needle embroidery machine
The most obvious solution is to use what some people call "hat embroidery machine". This is essentially a multi needle embroidery machine with cylindrical hoop attachments. You put the hat on a cylinder and it will rotate to embroider different areas of the hat
Sounds good, doesn't it? The disadvantage is that the cylindrical cap hoop is only applicable to the multi needle machine. And you can't get a cylindrical cap hoop for every type of multi pin. For example, the popular Janome MB-7 does not accept cylindrical cap attachments.
In addition, cylindrical hoop attachments are expensive - at least $1000. When you add it to the cost of multi needle machine and consumables, you will see an investment of about 8000 dollars. For most people, too much money is spent on embroidered baseball caps.
Even without considering the budget, a multi needle machine with a cylindrical cover will take up a lot of space. Therefore, it may not be the ideal choice for ordinary machine embroiderers.
Embroidered on baseball cap without any special embroidery hoop
You don't need fancy cylindrical hoops for embroidery on baseball caps. In fact, you can use standard flat embroidery hoop to embroider on the hat. You just need to use some sticky back stabilizers and flatten the front of the hat as much as possible.
Although this approach is effective, it is not without its own challenges. First, you must press the cap as flat as possible while placing it in place on the sticky back stabilizer. Then you must pray that it will not move. Finally, you also need to push the sweat band inside the baseball cap as far as possible in some way to prevent it from getting stuck by the embroidery.
This is not easy. You can't embroider near the brim of the hat, but you can embroider a baseball cap on a single needle embroidery machine without any type of hat hoop. It's just not fun.
Embroider baseball caps with Durkee hat frame
Durkee hat rack is an excellent solution for embroidery on the front (even the side and back) of a baseball cap - perhaps even better than the cylindrical hoop on a multi needle machine. This is a cheap, easy-to-use solution for embroidery on baseball caps
Durkee hat stand is suitable for single needle or multi needle embroidery machines. They have a set of clips to clip the two boards that fix the brim together so that you can fix the hat in place when you are embroidering. The device can also help you push back the sweat band of the hat to prevent it from being caught by the embroidery. The Durkee hat rack is also designed to expose you to the front of your baseball cap. Finally, the Dukee hat stand contains some convenient reference points, making it easy to align the design center with the center of the cover.
How to use the Dekki hat frame
One of the key factors for successful machine embroidery on baseball caps is the stabilizer. During embroidery, you need to use some type of sticky back stabilizer to hold the hat in place. Fortunately, my Durkee hat frame with a square, sticky back stabilizer is perfect for this job.
1. First peel the paper from the sticky back stabilizer to expose the sticky surface. Then stick the stabilizer on the back of Durkee with the sticky surface facing upwards.
2. Next, place the cap on the hoop. You need to open and unscrew the clip. Then, you stick the brim of the hat to the plate and tighten the clip.
3. Finally, you need to press the front of the cover flat on the exposed viscous stabilizer. To center the cap on the center of the hoop, you can use the reference point of the hoop itself.
4. Remove the regular embroidery hoop from the embroidery machine, and then connect the Durkee hat stand to the machine.
5. Load your embroidery design. Make sure to use a design that is suitable for the hoop area. I was a little cautious, so that the width and height of my logo were less than 3 inches. But I believe you can do more.
6. Rotary embroidery design. You also need to rotate the embroidery 90 degrees clockwise to properly align the baseball cap.
7. Start splicing your design! Once some stitching is done - this will further secure your hat to the stabilizer and you will have less risk of moving the hat around. So you can breathe more easily.
