Best Embroidery Hooping Tips & Tricks

Every beautiful embroidery project starts with good hooping. No matter how high-quality the thread, or how perfectly digitized the design, If you don’t hoop your garment or fabric correctly, you run the risk of ruining the look of your work before you even embroider your first stitch.

Proper hooping is often overlooked, which is unfortunate, because it’s so vital to achieving professional-looking results. Take a look at these best practices for successfully hooping your fabric and tighten up your hooping game.

Hoop Mastery is Where Great Embroidery Begins

Embroidery hoops hold the fabric steady during the stitching process and provide an evenly-tensioned surface on which to embroider.

Improper hooping can cause the garment material to stretch tightly or shift from too much slack. The result? Misaligned designs, puckering, and poor stitch outs.

While there is a slight learning curve, the fact is, the more you practice good hooping habits, the better you’ll become.

Hooping correctly can create a little frustration at first with beginning embroiderers, but once you’ve mastered the skill, you’ll enjoy great results: finished embroidery with perfectly-aligned stitches, smooth, pucker-free fabric, and a professional appearance.

Choose The Correct Hoop

Make sure you are using the smallest hoop that will accommodate your design. The closer your design is to the edge of your hoop the more stabilization your hoop will provide.

A hoop that is too large will enable the fabric to flex, bounce and move around, causing your misaligned stitches and ripples. The shape of the hoop also has an impact on hooping.

A circular hoop will hold the material more securely and with a more even tension across the inside of the hoop.

Use the Correct Size Stabilizer

The backing sheets you buy or cut from a roll should be large enough that it extends beyond all the edges of the outside of the hoop by about ½" - 1".

Measure the outside or your hoop and add about 1” to 2" in each direction. Don’t assume you know the outside dimensions of your hoop, since they vary, depending on the kind of hoop you’re working with.

Commercial hoops sizes usually refer to the inside dimensions of the hoop; but on home hoops, the sizes are listed by the allowable sewing size in that hoop. For example, on a 5" x 7" home machine hoop, you will need a stabilizer of around 9" x 12".

Use a Hooping Station and Placement Tools

The use of hooping stations can help with the speed and accuracy of hooping. A hooping station will hold the bottom hoop and the stabilizer securely while you align the garment and snap in the top hoop.

In larger embroidery shops with big jobs, a hooping station allows every embroiderer to hoop the same job consistently and in the same location on the garment.

Placement & alignment tools are highly recommended to facilitate initial placement and help position the design in the same place on every shirt.

Don't Stretch Your Material

Your goal is to create a firm, tambourine-like surface on the material without stretching your garment. If you stretch your fabric when you hoop, you will be embroidering the material in a tense, overstretched state under the stitches.

Your embroidery will look fine while it’s still hooped, but when it is freed from the hoop, all the fabric that has not been locked under the stitches will attempt to return to a relaxed state around the design and you will have unsightly ripples and puckering.  No amount of ironing will fix this situation.

Use Spray Adhesive

A light misting of a temporary spray adhesive between the fabric and the layer of stabilizer can provide some extra stabilization and mitigate fabric shifting, particularly when hooping very stretchy items like performance wear.

It's important to only use a light spray of adhesive, since over-spraying can gum up your needles.Remember, you should always apply the spray to the stabilizer, not the garment.

Use Double Sided Embroidery Tape

Double-sided Embroidery tape is a perfect solution for items that cannot be hooped or where portions of the embroidered item need to be kept out of the way. Simply hoop a piece of stabilizer by itself and use the tape to attach your garment to the backing.

You can also use a sticky stabilizer for hard-to-hoop items as well. Hoop the sticky stabilizer with the release paper side facing up.  Use a small craft blade to lightly score an X in the release paper and carefully peel the release paper off to reveal  the sticky surface.  Press the item to be embroidered onto the sticky stabilizer surface, position carefully, and embroider.

Don't Over Tighten Hoop Screws

Beginners have a tendency to aggressively tighten hoop screws. This can damage the hoop by stripping screws and increase the chances of hoop burn. After you have pressed the hoop together over fabric, gently smooth out any ripples or wrinkles and tighten the hoop screw. 

It is very important to snug the screw firmly so the fabric will not shift, but a simple finger tightening is usually enough to do the trick and keep the material snug enough for the embroidery process. Give the inner hoop one last very slight downward push, and you’re ready to go!

Machine Embroidery For Beginners