Tutorial: How to hoop t-shirt and onesies

I have been embroidering for almost two years now, and lot of that has been trial and error.  I have tested lots of different types of shirts, onesies, threads stabilizers, and needles.  I can’t tell you how many shirts and onesies I have thrown away because the design or applique was not straight or I caught the side of a little bitty onesie in my design.  After lots of google power and trial and error I have finally come up with a way to hoop my shirts. 

First hoop your stabilizer.  I use medium weight cut away stabilizer on anything that is stretchy.

Then I use my disappearing marker, and my “grid” I don’t know what it’s really called.  But there are holes in the middle and on the sides to use to find the middle of your hoop

I use the marker to mark the middle hole and the North, South, East and West points.

Next I turn my shirt inside out, fold in half and iron a crease down the middle from the top to the bottom of the shirt.  This line will serve as a marker to help you line up your shirt in your hoop to ensure your design is straight.

Spray your stabilizer with adhesive spray. I like this Dritz spray, but most people like 505 spray.  Keep your shirt folded in half and place the crease on the dots down the middle of your stabilizer.

Open up your shirt and pin it to the stabilizer around the edges of the hoop.  Make sure not to pin inside the area you will be embroidering.  I’ve made that mistake once and learned my lesson!

Place your hoop on your machine, move the edges of the shirt out of the way and embroider your design.  This was an adult sized shirt so it was easy to keep the sides of the shirt out of the way, sometimes on smaller shirts, especially onesies I have to physically hold the sides of it out of the embroidery area.