Piecing in the hoop replicates the process of foundation piecing, also known as paper piecing. If you’ve done foundation piecing with the sewing machine, you will immediately grasp the concept. While a little more intensive than regular embroidery, this technique really only requires attention to detail.
Use the patterns to pre-cut all your pieces. You can spray templates with TESA, swipe with a glue stick, or print on fusible paper and apply to the front of your fabric pieces for cutting. Be sure to keep the pattern piece attached until ready to place the fabric in the hoop to avoid using the wrong piece.
Skill Level
Basic embroidery and rotary cutting skills
All squares finish the same even though their dimensions may vary slightly due to some stitching lines extending beyond the finished seam line. Similarly, all small triangles finish to the same size and large triangles are the same size.
What You’ll Need
- Suitable fabrics for blocks, pre-washed and pressed (Tip: If fabrics are especially soft, starching can reduce distortion when stitching.)
- Printed block patterns and templates
- Rotary cutter, quilting ruler, and mat
- TESA (Temporary embroidery spray adhesive) or water-soluble fabric glue stick
- Stabilizer—I used Sulky Soft n Sheer. You’ll be using heat to press the pieces in place and water-soluble fiber stabilizers can shrink with heat.
- Appliqué tacking iron
- Double curve appliqué scissors
- An embroidery machine with a minimum sewing field of 5.75” x 5.75” for the blocks
What’s Included with the Collection
- Twenty-two designs digitized for piecing in the hoop
- Full size patterns and templates for each block
- Color sequence PDF with images of sample block
- This instructional PDF
- Quilt-As-You-Go Basics ebook
- PDF for making a journal cover
- Basic notes for
Watch How-Tos on YouTube
If you’ve never done piece-in-the hoop or paper piecing before, the process can seem overly complicated.
You can watch me stitch the heart from this set in the following YouTube video:
- How to Stitch Victorian Crazy Piecing In-the-Hoop Also, please check the website for new projects using these designs as well as specials and informative blog posts. At the time of this writing, there are two blog posts on this set:
- How To Embroider Victorian Crazy Patch In-The-Hoop
- How To Make An Embroidered Journal Cover
Preliminary Notes
If you’ve done foundation or paper piecing, you’ll notice there are a few variations:
- In paper piecing, fabric is applied to the back side of the printed pattern and the sewing is done on the printed side. When embroidering pieced blocks, all sewing is done from the fabric side.
- In paper piecing, excess fabric is trimmed off as you go by folding back the pattern and rotary cutting. When embroidering pieced blocks, excess fabric is trimmed off as you go with double-curved appliqué scissors.
Understanding the Patterns
Each design in this set except the border has a PDF pattern sheet.
For the border, cut 22 pieces 8” x 1”; the pieces are applied from the top down.
All pattern pieces are numbered with an arrow pointing to the side that will be initially attached.
This number indicates what order the pieces will be applied.
The first piece has a reminder to place it face up; all other pieces will be placed face down (right sides together)
Exact cutting is not required but I recommend not getting too sloppy about it. The outer edges have a ½” seam allowance while all the inner seam lines are ¼”. This extra bit gives you some “fudge factor” around the outside.
There are no digital cutter files included with this set, only the PDF for hand cutting. Because of the variety of fabrics you’ll be using and the simple straight line shapes and the fact that these aren’t appliques that require precise cutting, I found it easier just to cut these pieces with a rotary cutter or scissors.
Understanding the Color Sequences
All the designs except the border sew in generally the same order:
- A placement line is sewn that indicates the seam line for the finished blocks. This line will only be seen from the back of the project.
- Color 2 sews a numbered guideline for the placement of all the pieces. The seam lines will be sewn directly over these lines.
- Color 3 is an “edge guide” to help you with placing the fabrics. This line is set at a 1/4” offset from the seam lines. This is a handy reference particularly if you aren’t very precise with cutting or placing your pieces as it can tell you right away if you’re fabric isn’t going to get caught in the next seam.
- Color 4 will tack down the first piece of fabric in the design. This piece is always placed face up.
- Before color 5, place piece 2 face down along the indicated line. (Refer to the included pattern guide.) Color 5 sews the seam line.
- Before color 6, flip the fabric over and finger press the fabric smooth and flat. You can hold the fabric in place with a bit of glue stick. Color 7 will sew a tack down that will get covered by subsequent pieces or be enclosed within the seam allowance.
Repeat steps 5 and 6 until all the pieces are placed. Although I’ve set different colors in the design, I typically sew all of this first part in 1 color. The extra colors are to force the machine to stop.
It’s totally possible to stop the design at this point; all the piecing is done and your block can be used as is (exception is the heart, which requires the next to last color to stitch the appliqué).
The remainder of the design is all the decorative stitching. I’ve used a variety of colors here for flexibility. Color stops not only make it easy for you to match threads to your fabrics, they also make it easy to skip or delete areas.
Refer to the included color sequence guide for additional color information.
All seams are double pass so there is no need to use construction thread for the piecing steps. You may want to use polyester embroidery thread instead of rayon for strength.
Preparation
1. Print the pattern pieces.
Open the corresponding design PDF in Acrobat and print the full size pattern and corresponding pattern templates. Make sure Acrobat does not scale the pattern. For your convenience, a 1” square is printed on the first page of each block’s templates for easy verification.
You might want to print 2 copies: 1 for cutting and 1 for placement reference while stitching.
2. Cut your fabrics.
Loosely cut out the patterns, swipe the back with a glue stick and press it to the front of your fabric. Cut out neatly.
While absolute precision is not required, avoid getting too careless with your cutting and making the pieces too large or too small.
3. Hoop the stabilizer.
Piecing in the hoop is a floated technique. Because of all the extra embellishments, a tearaway may break down during stitching in some areas. And, since the designs are relatively open and delicate, tearaways can be difficult to remove.
On similar projects I’ve used heat fusible to hold the pieces after stitching but I didn’t for these designs.
Hooping a thin stabilizer may not be secure in your hoop. If it isn’t use some method to make sure it won’t slip. I prefer duct tape for this.
4. Stitch the placement lines.
The first 3 colors are placement guides.
Color one outlines the seam line. Use this as a reference for cutting your finished pieces. Note that after stitching it may no longer be straight due to push and pull.
Color 2 defines the stitching lines along with sequence numbers and color 3 indicates a ¼” seam allowance.
Sew these in color that won’t bleed through your fabrics but can still be seen. The numbers are within seam allowances and will be covered by several layers of fabric. Indeed, they are likely to be covered by the time you have to place the corresponding piece to having a copy of the pattern by your side as you stitch is a handy reference.
Note that none of these colors are required and can be skipped, which is why they are all separate colors.
5. Place piece 1.
On all designs in this set, piece one is placed face up. On the border design only, piece 2 is also placed at this time, face down (noted on color sequence guide)
The next color will do a zigzag tack down to secure this piece in place
6. Place piece 2.
All subsequent pieces will be aligned, placed face down, and stitched along the seam.
After stitching, the piece will be flipped over, pressed into place and then secured by a tack-down stitch via the next color.
7. Continue with the remainder of the pieces.
All remaining pieces are applied in the exact same manner: check alignment, place face down, stitch, flip, press, and tack down.
8. Sew the decorative stitches.
Once again you’ll have many color changes. Choose colors that work well with your fabrics.
Extra color changes mean more flexibility. It’s easy to skip one at the machine delete them in software.
9. Trim to size.
When the design is complete, remove from hoop, place face down on a cutting mat and trim to size using the seam reference (color 1) as a guide.
Exceptions
The first and last design have a few differences.
The first design is a heart and is finished as an appliqué. The last two colors of the design are the finishing edge around the heart. Before those colors sew, remove the hoop from the machine and trim off any fabric beyond the tack down.
The last design in the set creates the striped border. All the pieces are identical and numbered placement guide is omitted. The guides for this design are the raw edge of the seam allowance.
Because this design is simpler, pieces one and two are placed together with piece on the bottom face up and piece two on the top face down. Only the seams are stitched and are double pass as in the other blocks.
Project Notes
Full instructions are included for the journal covers.
For the quilt, I stitched all 5 of the squares, the 4 large triangles and 4 small triangles. I stitched each one through the batting.
For the borders, I stitched two hoops of the border, stitched them together on the sewing machine to form one long strip and then rotary cut them in four 1¾” strips.
The blocks were pieced together using a quilt-as-you-go method with 1” strips of sashing (½” finished) using the twin sashing strip method after adding a backing fabric to each block. See the included Quilt-As-You-Go Basics ebook for more details.
(Some items included with the set art not available with individual design purchases.)
Summary
Piecing in the hoop produces a highly consistent and accurate result provided you follow the steps precisely!
