Sewing Continuous Hoop Designs

Endless or continuous hoop designs are specially digitized for creating borders and other long connected designs seamlessly. Some collections may have corner connectors included to permit easier continuous borders around a corner.

Sewing these designs is quite easy, especially when using one of the specialty hoops that are available for most home embroidery machines with a minimum 5” x 7” sewing field. This How To covers tips for getting good results with specially digitized continuous designs and an appropriate hoop.

Many embroidery programs provide tools for building continuous designs. These instructions only cover working with pre-made designs intended for this use.

Supplies

• Design specifically digitized for continuous hooping by Lindee G Embroidery
• Appropriate hoop
• General embroidery supplies
• Fabric cut into strips and pieced if necessary
• Suitable stabilizer
• Starch (optional)

Design Notes

Continuous designs are easier to align when a registration stitch is included. I’ve found a line of basting stitches in the form of a “Z” is much more accurate than a single stitch point. The Z provides more stitches to verify placement, while a single point only provides a start point that is also a pivot point allowing the design to more easily get off track.

Each continuous design has a starting Z stitch and an ending Z stitch to make perfect connections easy. Some designs may have a pair of Z stitches at each end. These registration marks are longer, set as a separate color change, with one at the beginning of the design and a second at the end of the design. These stitches are meant to be temporary and removed after the embroidery is complete.

These stitches also make it easy to combine elements in software if you have a larger sewing field. The Z stitches are set in a different color for utility reasons. A color change will force the machine to stop and it makes it easy to skip these stitches or delete them in editing software, if desired.

I usually just sew the first registration stitches using the first color of the design (color #2) and the last set of registration stitches using the last color of the design.

While these designs are intended for a specialty border hoop, they can also be used with standard hoops. With standard hoops, you’ll need to pay a little more attention to hoop and aligning.

About the Hoop

Most specialty border hoops use a clamping mechanism to allow for easy rehooping. Simply release the clamp, slide the fabric to the next place, align the needle, and sew. Due to the clamp mechanics, it’s important to understand where you can place the embroidery—and that is within a few inches of the hoop side where the clamp hinges.

Fabric Preparation

When cutting your fabric, you’ll need to allow a few extra inches at each end to allow for hooping. Depending on your project, you may want to piece strips together either before or after embroidering.

For best results, plan your design to sew from one end to the other. If you try sewing from the center out, you’ll need to mirror one half for the pattern to match.

You also need to consider how you will stabilize the fabric. On washable fabrics, starching the fabric helps tremendously. For backing, I prefer to use a softer stabilizer like fusible mesh cutaway or wash-away fiber. Crisp tearaways will be creased by the hoop making it harder to rehoop without pressing. If a tear-away is needed, slide a smaller piece under the hooped and stabilized fabric.

When using a non-fusible stabilizer, I sometimes machine baste strips of stabilizer to the fabric (using a sewing machine, not a baste in the hoop feature), especially when working on extra long pieces or strips that will require a long period to embroider.

I also like to mark guide lines on the fabric using dressmaker’s chalk to keep the design from skewing over multiple repeats. I generally draw these guides to align with the Z stitches rather than the actual design center. Test any marking aid you use to make sure it can be completely removed.

If the strip is quite long, roll the fabric around a cardboard tube and use clips or pins to secure the tail around the tube. This keeps the fabric clean and reduces additional wrinkling. It will also reduce the possibility of the fabric tails becoming caught while sewing.

Sewing

Sew from the top of the strip to the bottom. When rehooping, the bottom of the previous design needs to be just within the upper edge of the sewing field so that the Z stitches can be aligned. This means the upper edge of the hoop will be over an embroidered area, which translates to uneven hoop tension all the way around. If you are using a standard hoop, make sure it is not too tight to avoid damaging the embroidery.

You can skip the first Z on the first pattern and the last Z on the last pattern unless you plan to connect the ends to each other. When the embroidery is complete, remove the Z stitches and stabilizer.

Other Notes:

If you want to mirror designs, be sure to test first to make sure they will connect properly. Also, you may need to edit the designs to add extra registration stitches.