How a design is born

Design suggestions
We love getting design suggestions from you. If we do a design that you ask for and you are the first person to ask for that design, we'll send you a free shirt with your car or bike on there. Please keep the suggestions coming through, we can't do them all, but this is the story of the TR6 Design and fairly typical of how we arrive at designs.

Got a suggestion for us?

TR6 Example
The TR6 Register forum contacted us to ask us to create a high quality Triumph TR6 design. Members of the forum submitted pictures of their cars. The photos were excellent quality, and we will need several pictures to make sure we get the detail right. On motorcycles, the designs of popular models often change each year, not just the colours! Roger from the TR6 forum sent us a few pics that were excellent, and the car was in showroom condition.

Visit the TR Register Website

Digitising the design
The pics are used as the basis of the design. We'll use one photo to base the shape of the design and other photos from different angles to pick up the details that might be in shadow or hidden. If we were printing, it would be really easy to put this photo directly on to a shirt but that is not what we are about. Making a design for embroidery is called digitising or punching. We feel that embroidery artist has the ability to create a feel for a bike or car that printing simply can't match. We use specialist design software that allows us to create the embroidery patterns, each design consists of over 10,000 individual stitches. It can take up to 30 hours to create a design. We don't sell our designs to anyone else, so they really are unique.

Read more about embroidery.

Quality checking the design
Once the design is complete, we have to test sew it on the machine on a piece of scrap polo shirt material. You can usually get a feel for how the design will sew out. We try to make it smooth on the back of the design, avoiding large knots and loops. If we do have any problems we will correct the design and sew it out again. When we are happy, we will sew out the shirt and sent it to the person who suggested the design for free.

Jackets, Shirts & T-Shirts
We only use high quality shirts and fleeces from manufacturers like Fruit of the Loom, and even in their range of shirts there are some that will not hold embroidery to the standard that we expect. Sewing these designs on T-shirts does not bring the best out of the designs, even high quality t-shirts, they are just too thin. We add additional stability to the design by using interfacing or stabiliser to prevent stitches pulling through and to make sure the fabric doesn't move as the machine puts the 10,000 stitches through it. When we embroider on fleece jackets, we'll add a topping to prevent the stitches sinking into the pile.

Hand finishing
After the machine has done its job, we hand finish the embroidery. We remove the jump stitches where two areas of the same colour are joined by a single thread, often noticeable on letters. We cut away the excess stabiliser and make sure that the finished design is a perfect as we can possibly get it. Only then will we add our Uniquewear product tag and bag it up to send out.

Manufacturers Logos
As you can see these shirts are not official merchandise and we do not do copy official logos. We believe that these items represent superb value for money, and are a tribute to the cars and bikes represented on them. We are not trying to rip off official shirts and jackets, we turn down orders where people ask for official logos.