Original text by Marina Belova

About two weeks ago I saw a cap with a 3D embroidery of a very high quality at my work. The distinctive feature of that embroidery was that it hadn't been done in the usual way — covering the 3D Puff with satin stitches. Instead, the 3D Puff was covered with the ordinary Tatami stitches because the design didn't allow doing it any other way — the shape of the embroidered object was too intricate. Nonetheless, the embroidery looked puffy enough.

Of course, I've been familiar with this method for some time now, yet I haven't seen any examples. Moreover, I haven't even seen a single photo of an item embroidered in this way. For this reason, I used to think that Tatami fill with its abundant needle perforations would break the 3D Puff and the embroidery would be flat. I couldn't be more wrong.

Of course, seeing a real-life example of an embroidery of that kind, understanding that someone managed to do it, one cannot help to become eager to do something like that, too. Having considered it for a while, I chose a design and digitized it:

It turned out that there was not the slightest difficulty in making a machine embroidery design that would work. All of the rules for digitizing a design with satin stitches over 3D Puff could be applied here: increase the density and secure the open ends (provided that they are present). I didn't use any understitching, except for the edge run. You can read here why I did so. I used the standard flat Tatami pattern that can be found in any editor, with needle penetration offset at 33 and 66%.

The embroidery process goes as follows:

First, we mark the place on the fabric where the 3D Puff will be located with a guide stitch. I do it only because 3D Puff is quite expensive, and I'd better not squander it:

Place a piece of the 3D Puff onto it, having previously sprayed it with an adhesive: I used Gunold solid 3D Puff because it was the only one I had:

Embroider:

Give the design the finishing touches:

Tear off the Puff. Everything looks very, very good.

3D Puff under Tatami pattern was nearly as high as under the satin columns:

All I have left is to remove the 3D Puff leftovers that stick out.

And this is how the boundaries are destroyed.