Simple method to hoop your fabric

I do love to use my embroidery feature on my Designer Diamond. My least favorite part is hooping the fabric and getting it perfectly aligned. Well... that was until I learned a hoop-less technique from a class I took from Michelle Griffith. Michelle taught us how to hoop using sticky stabilizer. Personally, I use Floriani Perfect Stick which has one sticky/adhesive side and I have always had good results. Here's how I "hoop" my fabric. Choose the hoop you want to use and take the inner ring out. Trace the inner ring onto the Perfect Stick stablilizer and then cut out. Remove a portion of the sticky back and place the hoop over the exposed adhesive so that the stabilizer adheres to the inner hoop. Once you are happy with the positioning, remove the rest of the stabilizer and adhere to the rest of the hoop. I like to adhere the top edge and 2 corners first. Once that's smooth, I will then remove the rest of the liner exposing the remaining adhesive and lightly stretch the stabilizer to cover the remaining hoop. Here's what the back of the hoop looks like:

The above photo shows the inner hoop already placed in the outter hoop. You can see that the Perfect Stick stabilizer does not cover every inch of the inner hoop. The other/front side has the sticky portion exposed. This allows the fabric to be placed onto the hoop and makes for aligning the fabric very easily. In fact, you can move the fabric around quite a bit without losing the tackiness on the stabilizer. Here's a "hooped" piece of fabric.

From the photo, you can see that my fabric doesn't even touch the sides of the inner hoop. It's just "floating" in the center of the sticky back adhesive. There is no sandwiching of fabric between the inner and out hoop. With fabric that is larger than the hoop, I just drape the fabric over the edges. Additionally, depending on the fabric, I have also slide another piece of tear away stabilizer under the hoop for added stability. I hope you find this hoop-less technique helpful. It would be great for velour or velvets where hoop burn maybe a concern. It's the only way I hoop these days.

Credo,

Lisa