If you’ve been down to our headquarters in the past few years, you may have noticed a member of our staff more interested in sleeping on the lawn than selling embroidery. That’s just Gus, Northwest Embroidery’s mascot and canine companion to sales manager, Brian Egan. Gus is a black Labrador retriever and quite a unique character.

It was four years ago when we first met Gus. He had made his way over to our office door, all alone and very hungry. From the look of him, it was clear that he was either lost or had been abandoned. Knowing he had nowhere else to go for the time being, Brian took him home, fed him and called the humane society and all the local vets in town to search for the person who may have lost him. After a couple of weeks without a single response, Gus officially moved into a new life with Brian and the Northwest Embroidery team.

Every Monday through Friday, Gus can be found on our lawn enjoying the sunshine, trotting through our hallways checking in on staff and customers, and riding with Brian on sales calls. Next time you stop by, be sure to say hello and shake Gus’s hand (he knows how!) He loves meeting new people, although we are still working on improving his sales skills.

For Northwest Embroidery digital print operator Shawn Reynolds, the local library has always been a special place for him to share with his four year old daughter.   As a Native American, Shawn has felt it very important to introduce her to stories and music of their culture. One day when he was returning some books, he asked the librarian if there was a Native American section available. To his disappointment, he was told that only a couple of books and one or two movies were there.

The intial let-down led to Shawn becoming inspired to work with the library in an effort to increase the amount of Native American materials into a full-fledged section for the community to share. His first step was to contact local tribes and ask if they had any items they would be willing to donate to the cause. Almost immediately, he heard back from the Puyallup tribe, who provided him with a large selection of books, CDs, and DVDs to start the collection. Other tribes are excited to get on board as well. The project has even gotten the support of Canyon Records, the country’s largest Native American record label, who has pledged to also donate CDs and DVDs.

Shawn says the most meaningful contribution so far was the library’s first children’s book with a Native theme, "Nanabosho, How the Turtle Got Its Shell”, which is based on an Anishanabe legend. It is one of his daughter’s favorite stories and they are both excited that a copy will now be available for everyone to share.

The success in the local library has given Shawn hope of expanding it to more Pierce County libraries as well as the entire state and beyond. The project’s Facebook page already has over 1,000 supporters from all across the world. Because the project is funded entirely by donations, every gift is greatly appreciated. Northwest Embroidery is excited to help Shawn create special t-shirts to sell as a fundraiser. To learn more about the project, visit www.facebook.com/eagletouchtheclouds

Did you know that the Smithsonian museum has the oldest printed T-shirt on record in their collection and on display? It is a campaign shirt for New York Gov. Thomas Dewey's 1948 presidential campaign. This shirt, and the majority of those you’ve seen every day were created through the process of screenprinting. It’s a technique that involves a pressing ink through spaces inside a fine mesh fabric that has been treated with a special substance to only allow ink on the shirt in the desired design.

Screenprinting requires the messy and time-consuming process of creating unique screens for every individual color in a design.   Artwork must be simplified into a limited palette of solid “spot” colors then separated into negatives which are then used to burn the color separations into the screens.   Because of amount of steps required for screen preparation, designs with many different colors can potentially end up with setup fees in the hundreds of dollars, all before a single shirt has been printed!

Not much had changed in the fundamental process of putting ink onto shirts until the arrival of digital garment printers less than a decade ago. By using a CMYK process of mixing four basic ink colors (similar to paper printers), this new technology turned the industry on its head by allowing an almost full spectrum of hues to be printed in a single design.   Because ink is applied directly to the fabric, it also means no screens need to be prepared before a job can begin.

Northwest Embroidery joined the digital revolution three years ago with the addition of our first DTG (direct-to-garment) printers, which use water-based ink systems designed specifically for white or light colored fabric. These printers have worked amazingly well with our customers’ complex and colorful designs; producing thousands of shirts and still printing for us every day. The one aspect these printers lacked however, was the ability to print on dark colored garments.

Earlier this year, we took a huge second step forward by purchasing an even more cutting-edge printer that has solved the problem of printing on dark shirts. It uses an additional layer of opaque white ink that is laid down as a base before the color inks are applied. This extra step now allows us to print on any color of shirt; breaking the final barrier between digital printing and traditional screenprinting.

Because digital printing requires no screens, set up costs are reduced to just a fraction of those our customers have been accustomed to in years past. It has also sped up our turnaround time to just 3 to 5 days for many orders after artwork has been approved. This means order sizes can now be smaller and still cost-effective!

If you look at the upper left corner of our website, you should be able to tell quickly that we’ve gone and changed our logo. We here at Northwest Embroidery are excited to now give our name a cleaner, more modern look that we feel is a better fit with the evolution of our brand. After quite a bit of drafts, we eventually decided on a version that wasn’t a total departure from the original design, but more of an updated version that maintained some familiarity.

Our first logo was created by a freelance artist back in 1977, the very first year we opened our doors for business. It featured a rainbow shape that curved into a thread shaped like a mountain - the thread representing embroidery and the mountain representing our Northwest locale. Throughout more than three decades since, only minor changes had been made to this original design, notably the shape of the rainbow and the colors inside.

Our newest logo now has the original rainbow shaped retooled into a sleeker curve with three stripes. The thread line has been completely removed and we’ve incorporated an entirely new typeface. It’s modern simplicity allows it to embroider really well. We’ve sewn it onto our team’s shirts and they all look incredible!