I already said it: when we need a tool, Locutus is the person to design and build it. My engineer husband is the best to find solutions to most handcrafting problems!
That’s what appened when I started embroiderying a small 5cm floral necklace. It would have been a quicker project but for an issue I faced when I had the mini hoop in my hands: I couldn’t use it to embroider on, it was just a cabochon for the finished piece.
The problem was how to handle small pieces of fabric: I happened to have small fabric samples that fit perfectly into the mini hoops, but those hoops are made just for the display of the finished piece, they’re not handy to make the stitiching. Those scraps didn’t fit easily in the hoops I had at home, either.
For the first project I was able to fit the fabric into a bigger hoop, securing two sides of the piece at hand to my smallest hoop, but that wasn’t a comfortable solution. Also, that solution couldn’t work for the other smaller pieces I had.
I looked for mini hoops that are suitable for the embroidery process itself, not just for display, but I didn’t find any.
When my husband came home that evening, he found the project already finished, but I explained him the problem and he said he would help me building a small hoop or loom for my next mini embroidery.
That’s how he made it.
The only idea that came to my mind while googling the problem was to adapt a small plastic container with its lid. Cutting the bottom of the container and middle of the lid, while kepping its sides to be secured to the plastic container, I could stitch up and down as with a traditional hoop. We tried, but it turned out not so good to keep the fabric in place: in fact it was not at all handy.
While struggling with this experiment, my husband dug himself into a box full of hydraulic items and came out with a better solution. He cut a plastic tube and found an elastic gasket just the right size: et voilà, the mini hoop was ready!
I used this mini embroidery hoop with my small fabric pieces to make another necklace.
I have to say I faced pros and cons, there could be some improvements.
It’s perfect for the small scraps I wanted to embroider on, and it’s also the very same size of the mini hoops I had to use for the final display.
The fabric tension doesn’t change, however the gasket leaves strong marks on the fabric: removing it, I found it took the shape of the hoop. It wasn’t such a bad issue, since the mark was just the right size of the necklace I wanted to make and the frame I had to display it.
The biggest issue is the thickness of the tube. Considering the small diameter, it’s too thick to be handy while working on the back. Making a knot to finish off the thread and cut it was the hardest part. We should try making another hoop cutting a smaller part of tube, but I fear the gasket used to keep the fabric in place would slip away easily.
I’ll let you know about any “version 2” of the mini embroidery hoop.
And you? How do you embroider with small pieces of fabric?
