Guides
These guides are written from running a small machine embroidery shop. They cover equipment and startup costs, taking custom orders without losing half the details in a message thread, and the questions that keep a piece from being stitched twice.
, 7 minute read
Divide the minutes guests are there by the minutes one piece takes, then multiply by your machines. Six minutes a piece on one machine is ten an hour. Here is how to time yourself, what changes the number, and what to do when more guests come than fit.
, 7 minute read
Quote a live embroidery event as hours at your rate with a minimum, plus setup and teardown, travel past a free radius, and a per-piece rate for anything past the pieces the hours include. Here is each line, what owners publish for it, and a worked example.
, 5 minute read
Write down the brand, line, and color number for every part of the design, read off the cone label on the day you stitch. Your machine file will not remember it for you. This covers what goes in the record, where each number comes from, plus the mistakes that make an old record useless.
, 7 minute read
A full-back design is 45,000 to 82,000 stitches in my own files, so one guessed number can be off by $50 a garment. I quote a range from real counts, add a smaller-design price, and set the exact number from the finished file.
, 7 minute read
A left-chest logo sits about 7 to 9 inches down from the shoulder seam and about 4 inches over from center. These are the standard numbers for hats, sleeves, and backs. You also get why the charts disagree and how to write a placement down so it comes out the same every time.
, 6 minute read
List a real stitched piece at a price from your formula, take payment in full through a link before you stitch, and treat pickup as handing over something already paid for. My Marketplace setup, with my real numbers.
, 7 minute read
Stop collecting sizes in a group text. Give the group one link, let each person pick their own size and type their own name, close it on a set date, and only stitch what has been paid for.
, 7 minute read
If you stitched something different from what the customer approved, the remake is yours. If you stitched exactly what they approved in writing, the mistake is theirs. Here is how to tell which one you are looking at, and what to say.
, 7 minute read
My rush fee starts at $50, and that is a floor, not an opening offer. Here is how to set your own number, why it should grow with the size of the order, and how to say it without apologizing.
, 7 minute read
I charge $30 to set up a logo up to 7.5 inches, $50 for anything bigger, and $25 for handwriting, once per design. Here is how to set your own number, when the fee honestly comes off, and how to say it so nobody argues.
, 6 minute read
Big shops turn away anything under a dozen pieces. My shop lives on one-piece orders. Here is why the two are both right, what a single piece actually costs you to make, the dollar minimum I use instead of a piece minimum, and the two things you never discount no matter how many pieces someone orders.
, 7 minute read
Someone brings you a jacket they already own and asks you to put a name on it. Here is how I price it, what my agreement says about a garment I did not buy and cannot replace, how I test a fabric I have never stitched, and the short list of items I turn away.
, 6 minute read
Most quotes go out before the design is digitized, so you are pricing a stitch count you do not have yet. Here is the square-inch math I use to estimate one, the counts I have seen on real jobs, how to read the exact number once the file exists, and how to write a quote so a bad guess does not come out of your pocket.
, 12 minute read
Sending out a left-chest logo runs about $10 to $25 from services that publish their rates. Learning to digitize costs $0 to $1,199 in software plus months of practice. Here is how to decide which side of that trade you belong on.
, 12 minute read
Most 'free embroidery software' lists count 30-day trials as free. This one doesn't. Here is what Ink/Stitch, Embrilliance Express, MyEditor, Bernina ARTlink, and the machine-brand tools genuinely do at zero dollars, and the one thing you still can't get free.
, 3 minute read
A folder system is free, a desktop thumbnailer is a one-time cost, a cloud organizer starts at $9.99 a month, and shop software puts the library where the orders happen. Here is what each one actually solves, and what it honestly does not.
, 15 minute read
A working list of everything a one-person embroidery shop touches besides the machine, organized by the job each tool does. For each job: the free way, the cheap way, and when paying actually pays.
, 13 minute read
Machine embroidery software is not one product. It is four separate categories, and most beginners only need one or two of them. Here is what each category does, real current prices, and what owners complain about.
, 6 minute read
The standard policy for custom embroidery is payment in full before stitching, with one exception: established business accounts, where a 50% deposit with the balance on delivery is the trade norm. Here is why the policy exists, how to state it, and how to handle the customer who pushes back.
, 5 minute read
A turnaround time is a promise about your whole pipeline, not about one machine run. Here is how to set a window you can keep, when the clock should start, what to publish, and how to charge for rushes instead of absorbing them.
, 6 minute read
The standard method is a rate per 1,000 stitches, and the working range is $1 to $3 per thousand. Here is how that formula actually works, what it leaves out, where new embroiderers underprice themselves, and a free calculator that does the math.
, 5 minute read
Four systems cover every embroidery shop: paper, a spreadsheet, a general project tool, or purpose-built order management software. Each one is right for somebody. Here is what an order record has to hold, where each system breaks, and how to tell which one your shop needs.
, 6 minute read
The whole invoice, published on this page with nothing to sign up for. Every section a machine embroidery invoice needs, line-item wording that justifies your price without a negotiation, a terms block, and the handful of habits that get invoices paid on time.
, 5 minute read
Ask whether no-show mesh can replace cutaway everywhere and you get four different answers from five people, all of whom sound like they know what they are doing. Here is that disagreement laid out, what is genuinely settled, and the complaints that come from using it.
, 6 minute read
Cutaway is the safe answer on knits and nobody argues with that. The article is what comes with it: scratchy backs, the badge effect on thin fabric, show-through, hooping stretch, trimming labor nobody agrees on, and a wrinkling problem that one seller has thrown six different fixes at without solving.
, 9 minute read
The honest version. What the equipment costs, what digitizing is and whether you should buy the software, the stabilizer and thread you actually need, what to sell first, where customers come from, and the business paperwork nobody warns you about.
, 5 minute read
Sticky backing solves a real problem on unhoopable items and caps, and there it is uncontroversial. The warnings worth knowing are about adhesive inside the machine and one seller's report of designs wrinkling after washing. The evidence here is thinner than for cutaway or tearaway, and this article says so.
, 5 minute read
An order that arrives as a conversation is not an order yet. Here is how to collect every detail in one message instead of six, how to move it off the thread, and why a paid order with an unanswered question is still open.
, 6 minute read
The list of jobs where working embroiderers genuinely endorse tearaway is shorter than most guides suggest. Here is that list, the complaints that come up over and over, the bits between letters that nobody has a clean answer for, and the real argument about substituting two layers of tearaway for one cutaway.
, 8 minute read
We make one of these products, so read this with that in mind. Here is what each piece of embroidery business software costs, what problem it solves, and the kind of shop it was built around, organized by situation rather than by rank.
, 13 minute read
The whole form, published on this page, with nothing to sign up for. Every field a machine embroidery order needs, the helper text that stops customers guessing, a terms block covering payment and turnaround, and how to adapt it for hats, blankets, and customer-supplied garments.
, 8 minute read
Most remakes are not machine problems. They come from a question that was answered, but not the question that needed answering. Here are the specific ones worth asking before the needle moves, and how to get approval in writing.
, 6 minute read
The split on water-soluble topping runs roughly along hobbyist versus commercial shop lines, and both sides are blunt about it. Where it is genuinely agreed, what it does not fix, and the separate argument about using water-soluble as a full backing.
, 8 minute read
Almost every stabilizer chart online says the same thing, and people who run machines every day pick those charts apart line by line. Here is what the rule is actually for, the two things veterans repeat that beginners never hear, and the questions nobody has answered.
Broidry tracks every order, quote, and payment in one place. Broidry is free until your first sale, with no credit card to start.
The embroidery pricing calculator works out what to charge for a job from its stitch count, blank cost, hooping, and digitizing. Tracking orders on a spreadsheet covers where a sheet holds up for an embroidery shop and where it breaks, and taking orders on a Google Form does the same for the free form-plus-invoice setup. The help center is the step-by-step documentation for running a shop on Broidry.