How to Use Hoops in Cross Stitching

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Vickie Pavone on behalf of Expert Village. In this series we'll be talking about the basics of cross stitching. This segment is how to use a hoop. There are two types of hoop. This is a tension screw hoop which uses a screw which can get bigger or if you tighten it, it makes it tighter and smaller. Well there's the tension and there's also the spring hoop. Spring hoop is more commonly used on your lighter weight fabrics like your linens. You just take your center; in this case it's marked with a little cross of thread. You put that part on the bottom. Put your material where you want it, you take your spring hoop and you set in there and let it go. Squeeze those tightly and then let them go. And then your fabric is stretched nicely so that you can see your holes that you need to work with. And that's your spring hoop. Now for a heavier weight fabric you want to use your tension hoop. You take the piece without the screw, you put that down, you put the center of your fabric there, you open it up as wide as it will go, you set it down over it, wide as it'll go, and then you tighten it. And then your choice is to either sew with this part up or this part up. It all depends on how you want to hold the fabric. But those are your hoops. Now sometimes you might choose to not to use a hoop at all. Generally if you have your edges taped and you want to use it without a hoop because you don't want that stretching then you can just tape your edges, they won't fray and then you just roll the fabric to the point where you want to sew. Then you just start sewing. And as you're sewing where your picture gets larger you unroll the fabric. That keeps it nice and taunt without stretching it out. And that's how you use and if you wish to use your various kinds of hoops."