Ok, now I think you understand the theory of my hooping aids. Let's give you a couple of examples of how much easier your life can be. We get many products that come pre-folded and are quite thick. Working in the oil patch, our most common item is coveralls. Here's how we do them. Unsnap the buttons and unzip only as far as necessary to insert a hoop, keeping the coveralls folding intact. Pull out the left sleeve until the embroidery area is open for hooping. Slide in either the hooping helper or a clipboard under the material and "Voila!". Hooping is easily accomplished and the coveralls are still folded. Place them in your embroidery machine just like that and embroider. When done, you can easily trim and finish without disturbing the folding, put the left sleeve tucked back in and you're done. An almost identical situation arises with bathrobes and you basically do the same thing. You can do all the stages,(hooping, embroidering, trimming, finishing and packing) without disturbing it's original shape.

We have also found this works well on lab coats, hospital scrubs and rolled up fleece blankets. I'm sure you can find many more applications. Please let us know some of them. We can all benefit. Happy Hooping!

I've found that the old fashioned clip boards made of pressed paper come in handy in so many places. We use them in a similar fashion as the hooper helper previously described to slide in behind the embroidery area giving a nice solid base to hoop on. They come in especially handy on nylon bags of all sizes where you have lots of material under the hooping area making it difficult to keep the the pocket flat and even. We cut the ends to make different widths all the way down to about 3". The smaller sizes easily fit in some of the tiniest pockets. Once you've slid the clipboard into the pocket, it's a piece of cake to hoop.

This is the greatest assistant I have. On the right, I've drawn a simple image of my hooper helper. They are basically made of wood (1/2" pine or plywood, well sanded ) but we did make one out of plexiglass one time. We have two of these in our shop as sometimes we are using them on different products. For example, on one machine we could be running names on sleeves of jackets and on another we could be running hat backs. The reason it is 6" wide is to enable us to use it as a base for our 18 cm hoop. We also have one that is 4" wide for use on smaller items (youth jackets for example).

What you do is slide the helper under the area where you want the embroidery to go. You then slide your hoop in on top of the helper and use it as a solid base. If you're doing sleeves, it just fits easily inside the sleeve and allows for easy smoothing of the material, placement of backing and very easy hooping. We sometimes attach the helper to a table or edge of embroidery machine with a carpenters quick release grip available at any hardware store (Quick-grip Bar Clamp). We use this mostly for embroidering on the back of hats. Without a doubt, this is the most commonly used attachment in our shop.

In the following posts, I'll be expanding upon it's other uses and other products used in a similar fashion.

Well, if any of you have been reading my ideas, welcome to my new Embroidery Tips and Tricks blog. I've been spending most of my time on the framework of the blog and very little on the actual posting. This has now changed and I'll try to add a new tip or trick to help your embroidery every day.

I'm also going to add a new feature. Each month I'll be digitizing a design and offering it at no charge to anyone subscribing to my blog. What I am asking my readers to do is send me logos and pictures they would like to see embroidered. I will choose the best and create that pattern. To ensure I get lots of input to choose from, I'll digitize a pattern (less than 10,000 stitches) at no charge to the person who offers the winning idea.

I've also added an advertising banner to some of my posts. If I find the ad listings not relevant or helpful, I'll delete it. Thank you for your patience and support and enjoy the tips.