An Embroidery Lesson on How to Hoop a Onesie
The first step for adding machine embroidery to fabric or “ready-mades” is to hoop the fabric. Sounds simple, yet with each different fabric type and/or shape of the project, there are valuable tips and techniques that make that hooping process simple. My Sewing With Nancy guest and professional embroiderer Marie Zinno and I give you five lessons during the first episode of Hoop It Up—Guide to Successful Embroidery. We hope you’ll follow along.
A Lesson on Hooping a Onesie
Learn how to stabilize, hoop, and embroider a blanket, burp cloth, bib, hooded towel, and onesie. You can easily watch online to see all the tricks of the trade. I thought I’d share one of the lessons with you—hooping a onesie—to show you that we have lots of tricks up our sleeves.
Step one: Stabilize the knit fabric.
- Fuse a large piece of a fusible cutaway stabilizer to the wrong side of the knit fabric. Later, the stabilizer will be trimmed down to size. The large fused area improves the hooping results.
Step Two: Determine placement of the design.
- Use a template designed for onesies to a achieve spot-on placement.
- Align the template with the neckline shape and center front of the onesie. This template is one of 16 templates found in The Children’s Perfect Placement Kit. If you’ve ever embroidered a design lower, higher, or off center, you’ll appreciate using these handy templates.
- Position a Target Sticker within the opening.
Step Three: Nest the onesie around the hoop.
- Use a Hoop Guard to keep the nested fabric from getting in the way of the embroidery needle. It’s a great investment if you plan on embroidering many small, ready-made items. The Hoop Guard is placed on the “north” end of the hoop. Watch online as Marie preps the hoop for embroidery.
- Use strips of painter’s tape to keep the remaining fabric out of the stitching field.
Step Four: Enjoy the embroidery process.
- Select your fabric embroidery designs. All of the embroideries for the featured baby items are from the Amazing Designs Collection, Cuddle Buddies.
Step Five: Remove the embroidery from the hoop and trim away the excess stabilizer.
Other Hooping Lessons
During this first episode of Hoop It Up—Guide to Successful Embroidery, learn how to hoop:
- A fleece or napped blanket—my kids called them ni-nights!
- Burp Cloths—remind the new parents to place the embroidered half of the cloth towards their back.
- Baby Bibs—new moms and dads need lots of these, so do the grandparents.
- Hooded Bath Towel—you’re going to like the nesting technique.
99 Tips for Embroidery Success in Hoop It Up, a book by Marie Zinno and Eileen Roche
Marie and co-author Eileen Roche have teamed up to show you how professionals hoop over 30 projects.
- Learn a different approach to hooping over 30 projects—both flat and tubular.
- Use either a standard hoop or a user-friendly magnetic hoop.
- Read and learn from two embroidery professionals.
- Inside the 80 page spiral bound book you’ll find embroidery positioning tools that you can use again and again:
- Angle Finder
- 4″ Target Ruler (two versions)
- 7″ Target Ruler (two versions)
- Target Stickers
Watch Hoop It Up—Guide to Successful Embroidery on Sewing With Nancy online.
To watch Sewing With Nancy on your iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone, download the app.
For a chance to win the Hoop It Up—Guide to Successful Embroidery DVD from Nancy’s Notions, or the book from Designs In Machine Embroidery, please leave a comment telling us your favorite baby item to embroider.
The random winner of the Simple to Chic T-Shirt Remakes DVD, from Nancy’s Notions, is Laurie. Here’s Laurie’s comment: “I like the blue, but I have to say I love the black one! It would be a wonderful birthday present! (Tomorrow) Thanks ladies for the great design ideas!”
The random winner of of the Simple to Chic T-Shirt Remakes Embroidery Design CD, from Designs In Machine Embroidery (DIME), is Linda. Here’s Linda’s comment: “I love all the designs and love decorating T-shirts for my friends and family. Thanks for all the new ideas to use in 2016”.
Bye for now,
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Mary Andrus
You may want to fuse a layer of soft interfacing or stabilizer on the inside of the onsie after embroidering and trimming to protect that delicate skin. I embroider a quilt for each of the babies in my life. Love all the tips.
Jeanie miller
I love making baby quilts and blankets
And adding their names
Carole Buerman
Collecting all information I can in preparation for grandchildren.
Ilana
Thanks for the timely info. I’m planning to embroider a onesie this weekend. I haven’t embroidered much for babies yet but I imagine I’m going to love it all.
E. Ann
Love the burp pads!! Need so many of these. I make these to go with blanket sets, will be including embroidery on these now that I have my Babylock emb machine. Fun, fun!! Thanks for the info.
Lynda
I love to make baby bibs especially for each holiday. I like the bibs with colored trim to highlight the design.
Penny
I love to embroider onesies and I do use and love the Children’s Perfect Placement Kit. I also like to embroider baby blankets using a blanket with a double layer, to be able to ‘unstitch’ a side, do embroidery, and then restitch the seam, so there is no embroidery on the ‘back’ side of the blanket. (clear as mud I am sure)
Joanne Dillon
Thanks for the valuable information on embroidering on onsies and other tiny items for new critters in the family. I love embroidering birth information on minkie baby blankets, always welcomed by the new mothers.
Cathy
I do embroidery work for a local retail business. The bulk of what I do is monogramming clutches. I also monogram small to large bags(cosmetic, totes) and decorative towels. Occasionally I get to monogram fun things and sometimes that includes a baby item. I think I like putting names on baby caps the best. They are so adorable and popular. I have never owned an embroidery machine, so I had a lot to learn when I was asked to take this job. The embroidery machine I work on is a Baby Lock Enterprise. I’m the only one there that knows how to operate it so any helpful hints are much appreciated!
Jan Wilson
I haven’t had much luck embroidering on baby items. But with this Hoop it Up-Guide to Successful Embroidery I will have to try the onesie again. I have a package of remaining onesies that I didn’t use because I ruined 2 of them and gave up. I have done bibs and burp cloths that turned out great but then they are easy to hoop.
Mary Bennett
. I like to embroider baby blankets using a blanket with a double layer, Would love to learn to do onesies
Pamela Cook
I love to embroider on baby quilts. But, after seeing all these ideas, I may be changing my mind to onesies!!
Jean Taylor
I am new to machine ebroidery, but m anxiously awaiting the arrival of my first great-grandchild. Either of these would be really helpful in making one-of-a-kind items for the shower. I.d really like to win either one. Thank you for the opportunity.
Vickie Fox
I have had my machine for a few years but had no time to sit and learn, self-taught, the hard way. Now that I have recently retired, I am so looking forward to learning from your videos, TV show, and other avenues of tips. Would love to win! Thanks for your experienced advice. Happy Sewing!
Diane C
My favorite baby items to embroider are bibs and Christmas stockings.
Grannie Connie
I’m new to embroidery by machine. So far I’ve only embroidered bibs and towels. I’m looking forward to adding onsies to the list and even more items. Thanks so much for your excellent lessons.
marie hannagan
I like embroidering baby blankets with Baby’s name, date of birth, and weight as baby gifts. They are always well received.
I get my blankets from Nancy’s Notions.
eginter
I was never able to take lessons on how to use my embroidery,so now am trying to learn how,does anyone have any ideas,I do have the book!
Carolyn
I am just beginning to use an embroidery sewing machine. I have a new grandson and would love to embroider cute bibs.
Nellie
Burp cloths! My first child needed lots of these. I love to put cute designs and cute sayings on them and supply the mom with lots and lots to have on hand. Some cuties need them more than others, believe me, I know! 🙂
Susan
I loved all the tips but I especially liked the tips on hooping onesies since we have a new baby coming.
Georgieann
My favorite baby items to embroider are bibs and burps! I have used premade and contructed my own as well depending on time and project theme. As a result of the great tips on your video I will try onesies too! Thank you….
Dorothy
I like to gift new parents with embroidered burp cloths. They’re fun and useful.
Sharie
I love to embroider on hooded towels. I make my own and do the embroidery on the towel portion so you see it when the baby or toddler is all wrapped up
Lynn
Thank you for showing me how to hoop the onesie! I have struggled with that in the past. I would like to learn how to embroider correctly on onesies and make some for my new little grandbaby due in August!
Bernita
I haven’t had a need to embroider on baby items since I got my embroidery machine a couple of months ago, but I do now. I have a new great niece/nephew coming and am so excited that this blog came out at this time. Plan on doing lots of burp cloths, bibs and onsies for this new little one!
Margaret Coleman
I love to embroider burp cloths that I make, also bibs.
Margaret Coleman
I love to embroider burp cloths that I make, also bibs
Mary Jo Maneth
I love to personalize burb rags
Betty Pegram
I have Cuddle Buddies but have not embroidered any. I love your ideas for baby items as a great grandma I now have fun ideas to work with. I love the tips on oneies I never realized the benefits of fusible stabilizer. I also see the benefit of the placement templates. Thanks
Veronica
I live in Florida and love to have hood Bach cover-ups for the grandchildren when they visit. Embroidering something personal for each one is wonderful!
Nelda Johnson
I really enjoy embroidering onesies! I use my hoop guard and printers tape often. I also like personalizing what I call receiving blankets that I sew from two pieces of fabric, either two pieces of flannel or one of flannel and one of minkie, or fleece or other super soft fabric.
Susan Case
So far, I have only embroidered baby quilts, but I would love to learn to embroider the onesies and also t-shirts. I have 4 grandchildren who would looovvveee to have Grandma make their clothes special! Thanks for the opportunity to win the book!
Janet Bryant
I have embroidered onesies and other children’s clothing items. The hooping is the hardest. I would love to win this book! Thank you Nancy for all the things I have learned from you over the years!
Vicki
I love to do baby bibs! But I starting one baby hooded towels and blankets! I would love to embroider onesies but am afraid of the hooping so now I need to give it a try! Thanks, Nancy and Marie, for the lesson
Sandra Goodick
Most of my baby embroidery is done for Quiet Books. I am super interested in embroidering onsies.
Judith
I have a new embroidery machine, and I have been wanting to start making things for my grandchildren. “The Hoop It Up” is such a great how to instructions. It makes it look like a good starting place to learn machine embroidery. The Magnetic hoop looks like it makes the process much easier.
Lynn
I have some onesies in my future.
Cheryl Dodson
My favorite baby item to embroidery are bibs. I also embroider my grandchildren’s names on quilts I make for them.
Cheryl Dodson
I make quilts for my grandchildren and I embroider their name on each quilt.
Belinda Braeuler
I’ve only embroidered on baby quilts, but my first grandchild was just born and I want to make bibs and burp cloths, as well as onsies.
Joyce brown
Love this info on hooping onesies! It will definitely come in handy for the embroidering I will do for my new grandson! I like to embroider lots of baby things…blankets, bibs, shirts, diaper covers, stuffed animals and ornaments! Sew fun!! Thanks for this opportunity!
Jane K
My favorite ting to make are bibs. I have made them for all the babies in my family, and they (and their parents) love them!
Terri Davis
I like embroidering plain, ready to embroider bibs. Easy-peasy and a quick gift idea.
Marty
Small ‘security blanket’ attached to cuddle toy is my ideal to personalize with embroidered baby’s name.
Louise Bacon
Baby quilts
Louise Bacon
I love to do baby quilts.
Gail Beam
Baby towels, diapers, burp cloths and blankets are my favorite baby items to embroider, because they are the easiest to not make a mistake on.
Lillian K
I enjoy embroidering on Burp Cloths, Bibs and baby T-shirts. This book would be perfect.
deirdre dorr
I would love to embroider onesies. I’m going to pick up a view before this snowstorm blows in!
s
My daughter loves embroidering burp cloths. This book would be perfect for her to learn more and to branch out to other items.
Jeanette Krebs
I enjoy embroidering burp cloths or hand towels.
Betty
I love making and embroidering one-of-a-kind baby quilts for my ‘great’ nieces and nephews when they are born. I’ve just started embroidering on onesies and love the tips you’ve shared – they will certainly make them easier now. Thanks ladies.
Karen
I make and embroider hooded baby towels and burp clothes and bibs.
KayZee
I like to embroider burp cloths and receiving blankets.
Jan
I absolutely love to embroider anything for babies! You name it — bibs, onesies, blankets — anything. The baby things are usually quick and easy and so cute. All the tips are great. Thank you, one and all.
Kim
I usually make a baby quilt with flannel on the back, then make burp cloths out of the same flannel. I embroider both the burp cloths and label for the quilt.
Susan T
Bibs made from tea towels.
claudia orozco
I love making bibs with matching burp cloths
Debra Reber
My favorite baby items to embroider are blankets & bibs
Joyce Fitzgerald
I have been making a simply bag for baby gifts for over 10 yrs , I love embroidering the baby’s name on the pocket,
Janae
I really enjoy doing the onesies! Baby gowns are my second favorite, if they have zippers on the side.
Brenda
I love to embroider bibs.
Tina
I am planning to get a machine that embroiders very soon! These tips will be very helpful for a newbie to embroidering. I would love to do some bibs. Thank you.
evelyn
Onesies, grandbaby coming in June. New to learn how to do this.
evelyn
Onesies, new grandbaby coming in June. Need to learn how to do this for all 5.
Jan
Bibs. Mothers always need bibs.
Cindy
I like to make the burp cloths and can use all the help I can get when it comes to embroidery!
Ell
Bibs allow a bit of creativity, so they are my favorite.
Adecia
Embroidered onesies are always a go to gift.
Grace Niederlehner
I like embroidering bibs, burp cloths, and blankets. I haven’t succeeded in hooping small shirts.
LindaC in AZ
I would love to learn how to hoop onesies to embroider. They would make great gifts. So far my favorite baby items to embroider have been bibs.
Karrie Smith
I’m researching to buy an embroidery machine and this book will be perfect for me!!!
pam
I gift custom baby quilts for family and friends which is what I embroider most often.
Karen McDonner
How cute and very timely. I’m making burp clothes, bibs and onsies so this is so wonderful. Downloaded and ready to go. Thank you Nancy!
Carol Y
I love the step by step instructions. Step by step to perfect placement!
Rosemary O'Koren
I love to embroider the bottom of the onsies.
Mary
I would like to make bibs and burp cloths! Love the ideas.
Robin Crittenden
I have only embroidered a couple baby things. Hooping was the hardest because it’s so little. Would love either of these prizes.
Allison Nesbitt
I have embroidered ready-made baby blankets and home made flannel receiving blankets. I embroider on a coordinating fabric with a design or baby names and then add it when complete because I find it easier in case of mistakes and the underside of the embroidery is not seen or exposed to baby’s skin.
Marge Smith
I was wondering if you would be willing to tell about the different Babylock machines and how they are used. I would like to know before I buy one. Our TV station is Maryland Public Television. Thank you and I love your show.
Also: How much is the book you are selling about your life?
I didn’t see it listed.
Nancy Zieman
Hi Marge,
I only have two Baby Lock Machines at my office. With sewing time limited, Baby Lock dealers know much more about the unique features of each machine. I’d urge you to take time for a review at your local store. You could also get a summary of the machines online at babylock.com.
My book is listed here: http://www.nancysnotions.com/product/seams+unlikely+autographed+book+the+true+life+story+of+nancy+zieman.do
THank you for following along!
Nancy
Linda Morales
I normally just do bibs,and burp cloths but would love to learn to do other items. I have had to remove threads because the product was not centered like I thought. This video is awesome……thank you and if you only lived nearby my experience would improve greatly. I LOVE these helpful shows!!!!!!
Becky stains
I like to embroider an elephant and the baby’s name on a car seat cover. Also towels and washcloths with the baby’s name.
Fran Rhine
Thanks Marie and Nancy to get me off my excuses of not trying something new. I am so excited about these Blogs.
Best Regards, Fran
Nancy E Johnson
Burp clothes and blankets.
Janet Weirauch
I have bought some supplies but was afaid of hooping the onesies this sure helps. Thank you again.
Rachel
I’ve been embroidering for a long time. I watched this show and still learned some very helpful hints on hooping.
My favorite baby item to make and give are burping cloths and small quilts.
M B Pazdernik
Hooping onsies is very challenging under size 6 months. And preemies – no way! But I did do a few preemie kimono style tops which the parents loved.
Norma Jean Landa
I would Love to win the Hoop gift. This will be, my first time to embroidered anything and with 8 nieces and nephews I would Love to personalize clothes as gifts. Thanking you in advance.
Deanne
I have a Brother S400 embroidery machine. I embroidered 2 lint free kitchen towels and a t-shirt. No issues. I’m very new to machine embroidery. I decided I wanted to personalize a few onsies for a friend but my machine ate my onesie.The threads got all bunched up into the feed dog. No matter what I’m trying is working. The thread is bunching up in the feed dog and leaving holes in my onesies. I did clear the feed dogs of all threads, material and lint. I using a new needle, embroidery thread and 806 tear away stabilizer. Any suggestions so I don’t continue ruining onesies?
Thank you,
Deanne
Nancy Zieman
Deanne,
Sorry to hear about your mishap! Try re-hooping your ruined onesie and place two players of tear away under the shirt and a wash away stabilizer on top. Your description of the fabric bunching up into the feed dogs tells me there isn’t enough reinforcement for this lightweight fabric.
Hope this helps!
Teresa
Is there a brand or two of onesies/bodysuits that are easier to embroider on than others?
Teresa
I’m so glad I found this great resource! Thanks for all your help.
Are there brands of onesies/bodysuits that are easier to embroider than others?
Latonia Pucket
wow what a lucky man I sure wish mine was that small
chiaraandcoaustralia
Absolutely in love with this lovely onesie embroidery tutorial! 😍 The step-by-step information is particularly helpful, and the ultimate result is simply too cute. Thanks for sharing this innovative and inspiring project. Can’t wait to strive it out for my little one!