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Banner Sewing Issues

daenterpri

New Member
Hello!

I just started sewing banners about a month ago. I purchased an Artisan 4420RB, Double Needle, Walking Foot, Lockstitch machine. I've been practicing and I've sewn quite a few banners with it myself, even made my first pole pocket banner with it yesterday. However, there are some things that I'm struggling with, maybe some of you can give me some advice. It's all fine that I've been able to learn this thing, but at some point I need to hand this piece of the operation over to my guys, and that seems like it will be difficult. Anyways:

1. How do you handle bleed? People are used to sending us exact size art and we've always used banner tape so that's never been an issue. Do you just fold it over 1/8" inside the art given or how do you go about it?

2. I've been teaching myself to do a down turn hem. The stitching is a much better look on the front of the banner. However, the problem with that is everyone says it's much easier to fold when it's an up turn hem because you can see the actual hem from behind while operating. And to hand this part of the operation over to my guys, it is going to need to be really easy. The 2 problems I see with an up turn hem is that the ugly side of the stitching is on the front, and the feed dog seems to leave a little bit of damage here and there from the face of the print. It's just not as pretty. What do you do?

3. I'm assuming for it to be really efficient for my guys, I need to get a hem folder. I bought some $20 off eBay but wasn't impressed. However, they don't seem like they look that much different from the $200 ones. Where do I get a good hem folder? Do they work well? And again, do I get an up-turn or a down-turn hem folder?

Our customers are really digging the look of our banners now that we stitch hem them. And I was hoping that it would really speed up our banner production over the tape route. But I can't say it's done that. It's been a tougher learning curve than I thought, and I can't say it's faster than when we taped. And I'm not looking forward to handing it over to my guys. However, I have one of our customers that will purchase 5 more banners a week if we sew them... so, we sew them!
 

GB2

Old Member
I hope you get some good answers to your questions as they are very specific and you've given good detail. I can't help you since I've been contemplating buying a machine and starting to sew for quite a long time but I'll be watching closely the responses you are getting here. Now that we are dealing more with fabric rather than vinyl, banner sewing is becoming more important, which brings me to the one question that I do have and that is, what type of material is it that you are using for your banners, fabric or vinyl?
 
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