Embroidery hoops - all you ever wanted to know!

I recently found a piece of embroidery in the cupboard, which I had done years ago without a hoop.

I photographed part of it to illustrate how working without a hoop can result in puckered fabric due to uneven tension.

This is most obvious on the unstitched areas of the panda and beside the leaves on the left.

I guess this is why I never bothered to get the finished work framed.

Nowadays, I nearly always use a hoop!

What size hoop should you use

It isn't necessary to choose a large hoop that your whole design will fit inside, unless of course you are doing bead embroidery (crushing beads between the two rings of a hoop is not a good idea!). For other techniques it is normally possible to move the hoop as you complete a section of the design.

Hoops are generally available in sizes from 4 inch to 12 inch diameter. I find that the 5 or 6 inch sizes are most useful for me. A smaller hoop will be easier to handle, and will tend to keep the fabric more taut than a larger one.

What if your smallest hoop is too big?

Well, you have three alternatives here.

• Don't use a hoop, and stitch in the hand instead.
• Buy a smaller hoop.
• Or use the following technique...

Place your smaller, inner ring on a hard surface. Lay the fabric on the ring with the embroidery fabric face up, then push the outer ring down onto the inner. Turn the work over and with a small, sharp pair of scissors carefully cut away the spare fabric where it covers the area that you will embroider.

Once you have completed your embroidery you can remove the work from the hoop and cut the basting stitches.

Adjusting the tension of your embroidery hoop

Do you ever find that you get your thread caught around this adjustment screw? Here is a tip for preventing that from happening. Think of the hoop as a clock face and ...

• If you are right handed, position the screw at 10 o'clock
• If you are left handed, move it around to 2 o'clock.

What if my fabric slips and keeps sagging?

Wrap the thin strip of fabric around the ring tightly and secure the end with a few stitches. This will help keep the embroidery fabric taut, clean and prevent any snags from a rough hoop.

Can I leave the embroidery hoop on the fabric when I'm not stitching?

What alternatives are there to an embroidery hoop?

Flexi hoops offer one choice. These consist of a hard plastic inner ring and a flexible outer ring that stretches over the fabric, to hold it in place, tightly. However, if you have difficulties with your hands, due to arthritis or similar, you may find flexi-hoops difficult to assemble.

Flexi hoops can also double up as a frame for the finished piece of embroidery.

Q-snaps are another option. These consist of lengths of plastic tubing that fit together into a square or rectangular shape. Separate sleeves are provided that can be pushed onto each side of the frame to hold the fabric in place.

They are light, can be taken apart for easy storage in between projects, but I find they do not keep the fabric as taut as a hoop and I am constantly adjusting them.

Spring hoops were originally designed for machine embroidery. They are almost flat so that they will slip under the sewing machine foot.

They consist of an plastic outer ring, and a spring-loaded, metal, inner ring with handles that you squeeze together, in order to position it inside the other section.

After accidentally letting go too soon, and having the inner ring spring back into me, I tend to avoid these! I also find the thread gets caught over the "handles" wherever you position them. They do keep the work nice and taut though.

Again, it comes down to personal preference as to which kind of embroidery hoop you like working with best.

This is your chance to talk about embroidery hoops!

Which type do you prefer? When do you use them, and when don't you? Feel free to ask questions, or answer other people's queries.

This is your section of the page, so feel free to add anything that you think will help other embroiderers find out which are the right hoops for them.

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