Monogram Towels without shrinking or puckering?

How do I embroider monograms on towels without the embroidery shrinking up when I wash the towels? I'm using 2 layers (both front and back) of med-lightweight solvy and polyester thread. I don't want to have to iron the embroidery every time I wash the towels, but that is the current situation.

Hello
There are several key things to note:

1. topping and underlay (you mentioned you already do this)
2. thickness of the stitches (satin stitch). You may need to make a little more dense, but not too much.
3. Add a background stitch to lay down the terry loops. This is sometimes calls mat-down or smack-down, etc. Lindee did a great video on monograms on stocking. The same would apply to terry loops or anything else with texture. Here is a link to that.

I hope this will help but let us know if you have additional questions.

Kim
Hatch team

Stupid question. Should I wash the towels before embroidering? The embroidery LOOKS great - the loops are contained, etc. My problem is that the entire field shrinks and pulls the embroidery and makes it look lumpy after washing. I guess I should take a picture of the result. I lay down a voile over the terry, like an applique - in fact, the pattern has a stay stitch just in case that is wanted. And then embroider the pattern. It is the entire embroidered field that is puckered after washing. Yeah, maybe washing the towels FIRST, and getting the cotton shrink out of the way would help.

I always wash my towels first on 60 degree for white and 40 for color towels. If you use a dryer then do that first too.