Through intricate stitches, embroidery gives us an opportunity to express our creativity. Thus the art becomes many people’s domestic hobby. However, beginners might find themselves completely lost among the vast amount of information. Yes, it may look a little bit daunting, but once you get grip of the technique, everything changes in a second. After all, these tools are designed to ease your burden and make embroidery smoother. What you’re lack of is only tricks and experience, which is easy-to-get through practice. As one of the essentials, embroidery hoops cannot be missed. Like other accessories such as thread and needles, hoops have been used by stitchers since long period ago. While many embroidery beginners still struggle with the usage of it. So read on, and this blog post is going to give you some tips and tricks to improve your skills.
1. Why do people use embroidery hoops?
Hoops provide numerous benefits to secure a neat stitching for your design. Apart from that, it is also useful after an embroidery is finished. Of all its uses, the three most important uses are respectively creating tension, helping to handle and to be displayed along with your projects.
1.1 Tension
The biggest reason why people get hoops is to keep the fabric taut while doing needlework. Even tension is crucial in embroidery. In the hand embroidery, some professionals can use their fingers to replace the hoop as tension provider. That truly requires some talent and hardworking. Not anyone can do that and it’s difficult to control and keep it stable. Needless to say, it’s infeasible in machine embroidery. While anyone can grasp the skills in using a hoop in 10 minutes.
1.2 Easier to handle
It provides handheld places to hold onto, which helps to handle fabrics. For hand embroidery, it greatly reduces embroiderers' fatigue. Also, it gives a proper vision for detecting any details clearly.
1.3 Help to display
When a project is finished, embroiderers might want their works to be showcased or displayed on the wall or somewhere else. This is when a light-weighted hoop really comes in handy. p.s. Some people will distinguish between those used for tightening and those for display, referring to them as "hoop" and "frame" respectively. Actually, the boundary between the two terms is not that clear. Generally speaking, the two names can be called interchangeably.
2. Can you embroider without an embroidery hoop?
Yes. Embroidering without a hoop is possible, but its limitation is quite obvious. It does not apply in all situations. Here are several circumstances when you can do embroidery with no hoops:
- You're experienced with stitching without hoops.
For example, some adept embroiderers use their fingers to measure the tension on the fabric. This is workable, but it requires quite strong fingers to offer a good control.
- The fabric you’re dealing with is fragile.
Some stretchy materials are easy to be distorted by the hoop. Therefore, to gauge and adjust the tension by yourself becomes your only option.
- You’re stitching along the edge or in an irregular shape.
3. Are all embroidery hoops the same?
No, embroidery hoops are not the same. Although they are all used by sandwiching the embroidery items between itself, they do achieve different embroidery effects. Their differences can be substantiated from many aspects, such as type, material, shape, and size. So, let’s explore the question further.
3.1 The Type
Through the years, embroidery hoops have developed various genres, such as screw tension, spring tension, flexi hoops, Q-snaps, etc. Essentially they all hold the fabrics in the same way. But due to their distinct structure and working mechanism, their working efficiency and effect can be with large differences. And the primary distinction lies in the manner in which they apply tension to the fabric.
- Screw Tension
As one of the most commonly used hoops, its greatest advantage is that you won’t need to make a great effort to fix the items. A screw on the outer ring will let you loosen or tighten the tension with ease.
- Spring tension
Used for both machine embroidery and hand embroidery, spring tension hoops create tension mainly by their metal inner ring. Sneeze the handles on the inner ring and slot it into the plastic (wooden) outer ring. Its ease of use is comparable to a tubular frame, except that the way of applying force changes from pressing to squeezing. However, there is one tiny shortcoming: the handles could get in the way if there is no enough margins left between the pattern and the hoop itself.
- Flexi hoops
What’s special about flexi hoop is that they are made from pliable materials, like silicone or plastic. Though some of them may look like real wood, that’s not their raw material. Their advantage is being able to hold the fabric super tight. In the mean time, being hard to get it rid of the fabric is their largest defect. Some people would prefer it after a work is finished instead of when the embroidery is still undergoing.
- Q-Snaps
Differed from other categories, Q-snaps does not appear as a circle. So, not a hoop technically. It’s easy to understand how light weight and portable it is from the above picture. Being easy to use and applicable with a wide range of fabric sizes, they become a popular options among embroiderers. Nevertheless, sometimes it can be difficult to remove it by hand. So remember to prepare a gadget in your toolkit to help pry them down.
Magnetic hoop is a special presence among all the hoop types. It’s essentially an ordinary plastic hoop added with a magnet. It uses a magnet to hold the fabric securely in place. That produces really strong force and the fabric is always kept taut. The adjustment actually becomes difficult when used with magnetic hoops.
3.2 The Material
From traditional wood and metal to modern materials like plastic, silicone, vinyl and rubber, embroidery hoops come in various characteristics. But their differences in using differs not that much. In addition, there are some special embroidery hoop materials in specific areas, like the bamboo hoop in China.
3.3 The Shape
In hand embroidery, the most common hoop is circular. While in machine embroidery, it’s rectangular. But hoops come in numerous shapes, in fact. For example, there are oval, square, polygon and even triangle ones. Hoops in common shapes are available in many size options, but a hoop in niche shapes is not the case.
To be honest, shape has a minor influence on the embroidery project. In fact, most of the uncommon shape designs originated from decorative considerations. If you only want a hoop to secure a tidy stitching, then there is no need to pay attention to the hoop shape.
3.4 The Size
The most common sizes contains 4 x 4”, 5 x 5”, and 6 x 8”. But ranging from small hoops to jumbo ones, hoops varies a lot as with sizes. The insiders in the industry have 2 measurements for hoops, one in millimeters, the other one in inches. Sellers will label both units on the product introduction page. So you only need to remember one of the standards. By the way, in order to make those numbers more memorable, they might not be extremely precise as with decimals. For instance, hoops labeled as 3.9" and 4" in different shops might actually be of the same actual embroidery size. And that is the really crucial number.
4. How to choose an embroidery hoop?
Though there are multiple embroidery hoop types for you to choose from, magnetic hoops is without doubt the top pick. Invented by an American company decades ago, the very product soon captured customers’ heart and went popular. Nowadays more and more companies start making this type of machine, offering more choices for consumers. The content below will show you in detail why magnetic hoops are the most worthwhile hoop.
The traditional hoop bites the fabric with its inner and outer rings. The longtime biting will easily leave hoop marks to the fabric. However, a magnetic hoop offers tension in another way. Fixing the fabric with a strong magnetic force causes less strain in the embroidery procedure, leading to less possibility to hoop burns.
- Use with ease
Put all things in place, snap the hoop together, and the hooping is basically over. You just need to make little adjustment. It’s neither tiring nor inefficient. You just need to be careful not to clamp your fingers, because it will leave you really hurtful bruise.
- Of good durability
Since you do not need to press, twist, or squeeze it, the hoop is hard to be damaged or cracked in daily using. No matter you’re running a business or just enjoying yourself with the stitching art, magnetic hoop will be a good partner for you.
5. Does embroidery hoop size matter?
Embroidery hoop size matters, and it matters a lot. The point of using a hoop is for tension, and obviously an unappropriated sized hoop cannot keep your fabric taut and smooth. Hoops are available in sizes from 3” to 18”. They’re usually about one inch larger than the patterns. Based on that, embroiderers will choose hoops as small as possible to create a suitable tension for their projects. As a result, hoops of 4×4”, 5×5” and 5×7” become the most common sizes. However, there is one exception. Q-snap frames can spare you from the size selecting. A common sized Q-snap can be compatible with the majority of embroidery designs. That’s a competitive edge of the thing.
What’s more, machine compatibility also need to be considered. All embroidery machines have a limitation on the max embroidery area. Therefore, a hoop should not be too large compared with it.
6. How do you embroider something too small for a hoop?
There are two ways. First one, attach it to a larger material. Second one, get a smaller hoop. Let’s talk in detail about the steps of taking the first approach. First find a spare fabric or a piece of stabilizer and attach the fabric to be embroidered to it. Using temporary spray adhesive is the most convenient. But if you do not desire the backing to be ruined by the fabric, you can baste it. Once the two pieces are made together, the rest is the same as the regular hooping procedure. Just remove the spare fabric or snipping the basting stitches after completing the project.
7. How do you use an embroidery hoop for beginners?
The usage for different types of hoops vary slightly. Below, we will use the two mainstream embroidery hoops, the screw hoop, as examples to explain their steps of use. By the way, never forget to select a hoop that’s at least 1 ring smaller than the fabric.
Now, steps to use a screw embroidery hoop is as follows: ① First loosen the screw and separate the inner and outer hoops. ② Next, place the inner ring on a flat surface with the side adjacent to the outer ring up. ③ Place the fabric on the inner ring with the embroidery area inside the hoop. ④ Then slot the outer ring on top of the fabric ⑤ Tighten the screw slowly along with adjusting the fabric. Carefully pull the edges of the fabric. ⑥ Make sure the tension is even on all sides and then tighten the screw until the fabric is totally stuck.
Conclusion
A good hoop helps, while a poor hoop can only lead to constant frustrations. SewTalent is a high quality embroidery hoops provider. We have been devoted in the industry since 19 years ago. We specialize in making high quality magnetic hoops and regular tubular hoops. Click here to get a SewTech hoop.
