Machine Embroidery for Beginner’s Series | Part 1: Hooping Made Easy

starting in machine embroidery can be a bit of a daunting and confusing task you might be wondering where do I start what all do I need to know and how can I learn it all quickly well thankfully our new easy-to-follow embroider II Legacy beginner series is going to answer all these questions and more for you to help you get past the learning curve and well on your way to mastering this beautiful art hi I'm John Deere the world's most awarded embroidery digitizer and owner of embroidery legacy my family's been in the embroidery industry since the 1950s and with over 35 years of experience under my belt I've taught thousands of new embroiders like you the ropes in these embroidery beginners videos I'm going to walk you through some of the essential embroidery principles and share some of our family's time-tested tips tricks and secrets from hooping to thread types and so much more if you follow along with these videos you'll be embroidering like a pro in no time [Music] coming from the commercial to the home industry there was one thing that really stuck out to me and that was the shape of the hoops in the commercial days we actually did a lot of contract embroidery we had 136 multi heads five shipley machines and 57 employees that did embroidery almost 24 hours a day and whenever we did garments our hoops were always this shape it would always be a round tube for our smaller designs because it's logical to have your embroidery design fit the size of the hoop you don't want to do a little one-inch design and a hoop this size but it would always be round because when you hoop something in a round hoop you have even tensioning all the way around the frame now what I noticed was there were actually hoops that were smaller but they actually are rectangular in shape now what that means is instead of having even tension all the way around a circle you now have four corners of the hoop that are actually being held securely and on these straightaways you end up having a lot of area where the material can actually pull on either side the longer the straightaway the more it's going to pull so that was one of the first things that I noticed when I came into the home industry was the shape of hoop now I do want to mention that I do have circular hoops for my brother 10 needle machine this is a hoop for a brother 10 needle it is an accessory but it's well worth the money if you have the possibility of getting round hoops for your embroider machine by all means do it you'll always get better quality results when you actually embroider now the larger the hoop the larger the problems when you're talking about a large hoop this size and we know that our hoops are getting bigger and bigger whether it is a drop-in bobbin like a single needle machine that does combinations of embroidery and sewing and quilting or whether it's a standalone rotary hook style machine the hoops are getting bigger and as you have these longer straightaways you have more pulling on the material especially if it's a stretchy material or if it's a you know kind of a material that has ribbing in it and it will distort or if something's a little slippery it can actually hold on one side of the hoop because you have to remember when you are doing your hooping you have two different sides this side is actually going to hold the stabilizer the stabilizer is going to be touching this side of the hoop and stabilizers generally do their job they hold things stabili this side of the hoop is going to actually touch the material and if you have a shear or slippery material or you have a material that has a lot of stretch in it that will actually move on this part of the hoop but stay secure on this and that's one of the main reasons why people get a lot of puckering and distortion within their designs now before we go any further I want to give you my time-tested trick for hooping properly the idea of hooping properly means that you should hoop it right the first time now I know that sounds like a lot because usually people struggle with hooping that either hoop their design too tightly meaning that the hoop is far too tight and they have an epic battle trying to get the fabric and the stabilizer into the hoop now that can be a little tough on the wrists so what they do is the opposite they make sure that it's loosened up so it just slides right in but then the problem is the hoop is almost literally falling off of the top piece and then they try to tighten it up with a screwdriver because if you can see that notch there it looks like you should be able to but under no circumstances do I really like to see people tighten up the little you know screw on their hoop if at all possible that actually causes hoop burn within the material and then you have to steam it to get it out and try to basically work it out with a brush so what I like to do is pre gauge my hoop and I do that by taking my stabilizer and my material and I take them together as one piece and I'll always turn them over one time and then I'll take my finger and my thumb and I'll basically look at the space of material that I see between my finger and my thumb if this were terrycloth it'll get wider if it was silk it'll get a little thinner I look at that and that's my visual gauge for presetting my hoop so when I grabbed the opposite end of the hoop where you tighten it and I pull on it you should be able to see a little space right between those two openings right there that space that I see right here should be approximately the same space as I actually saw with the fabric and the stabilizer pinched between my finger and my thumb so once I set that so that it's basically the same amount of fabric then I'll always take my hoop and I always keep the area that you can tighten and loosen towards the top I'll take my stabilizer in my material and I'll just place it and put it down over top of the bottom part of my hoop then I'll take the top part of my hoop and I'll always slide into the top end where you can loosen and tighten the the you know lower hoop I'll slide that so it separates it and then I'll work out any little creases or ripples that I see in the fabric and while I'm pushing forward I'll also push down with my palms and I'll just push down in one swift motion I don't like to pull on the hoop after the fact that actually went in nice and securely I didn't battle with it and all I'm gonna do at this point is actually give it a little bit of an oomph inside of the hoop that'll push it ever so tightly and now when I look at this I can see that it's absolutely drum tight it's nice and smooth on the surface there's no rippling and I'm not going in after the fact and tightening it up and I'm not getting any pinching on the material on that side so if you do this and try it just try that little measurement of seeing how much distance is between your finger and your thumb when you have your material there and then adjust it to the amount of space between the two hoops and you'll find that it hoops or the bit of resistance but you won't be battling it now we do have a couple of other tricks up our sleeve and we have done featured videos on these on our YouTube channel one is using double-sided tape and what you do is you take your hoop and you take your double-sided tape with the according thickness and you will put double-sided tape all the way around this part of the hoop that means that this edge stays nice and tacky and if the material touches this side and that's shear or slippery it won't move in and it does stay tacky for multiple hooping x' this one would actually be a little bit wider and you can see that it would match up perfectly to the thickness of this hoop as well so that's one little trick that we have for doing freestanding lace we also will use things like T pins the T pins are slid in between the two areas of the hoop where they basically touch and when you lock your fabric or your stabilizer in place it stops it from pulling in and you can do really large designs we're talking about big quilt squares or if you're doing freestanding lace you can't have a free-standing lace design with a hundred thousand stitches and because you've actually given that extra bit of stability within the hoop it's not going to move we've also in the commercial days we used to actually wrap our hoops with hockey tape and I know that kind of sounds funny but we would actually take hockey tape wrap it around the sides either side of the hoop and if we were dealing with let's say golf shirt material things with a lot of stretch on them that would really secure the stabilizer and the material from pulling anymore because it's not really touching a plastic it's touching more of a fibrous type of texture as it's going around now I'm all for trying different things if you have basting stitches on your machine if you use a little bit of spray adhesive if you use sticky back stabilizers some things you honestly can't hoop you have certain things like terry cloth that have a high pile and there you might need to use a little bit of actually spray adhesive or a tacky back stabilizer to just temporarily float those items there's also a lot of in the hoop projects now which you wouldn't actually hoop the entire item within the hoop it's a series of laying down different pieces of fabric and certain orders and those types of projects are generally floated meaning that you hoop your stabilizer but you float the material that's going on top anything you can do to give a little bit more stability will definitely always help with the end results if you want to see more videos on our hooping techniques make sure you click on the links in our description now we all know it's all about the toys and there have been some really innovative advancements within hooping technology one of them is the hoop snap monster and this one is incredible this is set up actually for a brother machine on a flatbed and it is actually a magnetic hoop and the beauty of this is you can actually take the base which is metal and then you just place your item in the area that you want to embroider and you take this part of the hoop right here and you just line it up to the very top of the area that you want to actually place the hoop and make sure that everything is lined up as close as possible make sure that everything smooth and then very quickly you just drop it in place and it is nice and tight and you have perfect hooping without any of the fuss and muss so these are awesome they're incredible and this is one of those accessories that you'd want to make sure that you have for whatever machine brand that you own now when talking about toys this is one of my favorites and this hoop is actually made for a commercial machine we're not talking about a flatbed machine with a drop-in bobbin we're talking about a multi needle machine that has a you know tubular arm a rotary hook timing that comes out and these are wonderful because they are incredibly strong we're talking so strong that it actually has a warning on the front that says please keep away from people who have pacemakers and if you do get your hand kind of trapped in between these two magnets it is like a mousetrap it really really hurts but when I'm doing it an item like this and this is a canvas knapsack or I guess a little you know canvas bag but it it does have the little arms that go through if you try to hoop something like this it can be a little bit problematic especially when it does have seams I can see that there is a sewn seam at the bottom here so something like this I just have to take the one side of my mighty hoop slide it right in line it up where I want it to be and then once it's in place and if you notice I'm not using any stabilizer 99% of the time I always tell people you should use stabilizer within your designs but once in a blue moon if I'm dealing something with something like a heavy canvas like this I know that I can get away without using it unless it's a design that has a ton of stitches in it so I'm just gonna take this and I'm just going to snap it right in place and if you look at that it snapped in there perfectly it's nice and tight and I don't have to do anything other than load that on the machine through the tubular arm and now one of our favorite accessories is the Echidna hooping station these hooping stations are incredible because they can be used with any brand of machine in any hoop style whether it's magnetic or whether it is a regular hoop or a commercial hoop and the way these work is there's two different units one is actually for onesies and things like ebay bears the other side is for sleeves or smaller items and then the other unit is actually for adult sizes and ladies and youth and the beautiful part is they are a non-slip surface they actually have a metal plate behind them they hold your hoops in place with magnets and you actually can take any hoop that you want put the base of it here is the base right here we'll just hold this in place we'll put a couple magnets at the bottom and then we'll put a magnet up at the top and once that actually is being held by six magnets it's going absolutely nowhere then you just take your piece of stabilizer throw a stabilizer over top hold it in place quickly and that actually eliminates the need for your stabilizer to be you know put in there without being held in place I know all of you have that you've hoped an item look at it after you pooped it and you notice that the stabilizer is moved that is no longer the case so that's the beauty of these is they are ergonomically friendly you're actually leaning against a curved or an angled surface so that you're not actually putting any strain on your arms or your back and you can actually mark these with the aides of the embroiderer helper these are an aftermarket accessory which we do offer with the whooping station and you can actually set up one of these whooping stations for almost any type of garment whether it's a t-shirt a sweatshirt and you can mark all of these sizes so that you don't have to measure every single time so they are just one of the greatest things now if you are trying to hoop something like this you have an EB bear where you can actually pull out the stuffing and when you do this you can now see that you can slide this right over top of the the arm of the hooping station the stabilizers held in place and you have no issues whatsoever this is another product that we have multiple videos online for that show you exactly how to set them up how to set the placement for all of the different garment sizes and show you how to put your hoops in place and how to hoop tightly and perfectly every single time one question we have had over and over again is will these work with the mighty hoops because they are magnetic and the answer is definitely yes actually they work even better than almost any other hoop type because when you take this piece it is magnetized and it actually holds in place and you do not have to use any of the magnets that come with the Echidna hooping station all you have to do is make sure you put your stabilizer down and hold that in place and you're ready to go so hooping with the magnetic hooping station is incredibly easy as well thanks for watching if you want to make your embroidery life easier be sure to hit the subscribe button below to be notified of new tips and tricks videos giveaways and more plus if you want to try stitching out some of our embroidery designs click the link in the description below to learn how to download your free embroidery legacy design kit today

Channel: John Deer's Embroidery Legacy

Views: 50,225

Keywords: machine embroidery for beginners, machine embroidery, how to embroider, starting machine embroidery, how to start embroidery, how to hoop, embroidery hooping for beginners

Id: 0F6-grF1dVk

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2020