When I talked about blending colors in embroidery yesterday I mentioned the importance of first creating a good base of underlay to stabalize the fabric and create a good base for lower density embroidery. There are however, many other good reasons for using underlay. One function of underlay is evident in the example to the left. As you can see an edge walk underlay was used under the lettering. (for those of you unfamiliar with the term "edge walk" it simply means using a running stitch underlay which follows the edge of the shape) The function of this type of underlay is to make sure that the column stitches in the design remain crisp and clean. This is especcially important if you are embroidering on a fabric with a grain such as serge or twill, as column stitches have a tendency to follow the grain of the fabric on thse specific fabrics. When this occurs the columns tend to become jagged much like a bitmap image that has become pixelized and loose their definition. When you use an edge walk underlay the column stitches follow the running stitch as opposed to the grain of the fabric and remain crisp. The edge walk is an automatic function of all of the large lettering fonts included with Compositions project based embroidery software. To download your free trial copy to use for 30 days go to www.kenparsonsdesigns.com