free motion embroidery - Hoop or gloves?

21 Oct

In my last blog I wrote about using stabiliser and one of my disaster stories, lol.

In this blog I am going to write about using a hoop or quilters gloves.

Now I use both when I am free motion embroidering (not at the same time I hasten to add).

I absolutely love using an embroidery hoop, as it enables you to have a great deal of control over moving your fabric around, and let’s remember that you are going to stitch from side to side and backwards and forwards - so it gives you great flexibility.

If you use a hoop, then the trick is to place your fabric into the hoop, but the opposite way in which you would if you were hand stitching. You place the outer ring of your hoop onto your worktop, then place your fabric on top of that, then the inner part of your hoop sits nicely over the fabric. So basically the fabric is sitting against your worktop, and not proud in the hoop.

I have added a picture below so you can see exactly what I mean.

free motion embroidery using an embroidery hoop

The hoop that I normally use is a 6 inch hoop, but you can use whatever size hoop that you want to. It really does give you a great deal of control when free motion embroidering.

The other option is to use quilters gloves. I love my quilters gloves. I would use them if I was working on a larger piece of FME. The gloves relieve the pressure from my hands and wrists and still enable me to have control over my fabric when moving it around.