I have always loved the look of fabric wrapped hoops for displaying your embroidery.
And, even though it's pretty easy to figure out how to wrap fabric around the hoop, I was wondering how other crafters were finishing the backs of their hoops. Although, after looking online to find tutorials, I found very few.
For the hoops that I have made in the past, I left my embroidered fabric long, pulling it tight together using needle and thread and covering the whole back with a circle of felt or fabric. It looked nice, but it was a lot of extra work.
Well, I recently notice at a craft show a couple hoops finished with the embroidered fabric cut short and hot glued inside the edge of the hoop. I like the simplicity of it as well as being able to see the back of my work. I try really hard to keep the back of my embroidery neat and I don't mind seeing it. Although, for gifts or for selling, it would be nice to glue a circle of felt or fabric to the back. Maybe I'll do that next time...
I hope you find this tutorial helpful.
{hugs}
Laura
After finishing my embroidery and making my crochet accents, I am ready to get started.
I used a rotary cutter to cut thin strips of fabric. My hoop is 4 inches and I cut 2 strips of fabric that were 1/2 inch wide and 24 inches long. They don't have to be perfect because the edges don't really stand out after it's wrapped. So, if you don't have a rotary cutter, scissors will work great.
For wrapping the fabric, I used school glue. It worked great keeping the fabric in place and it's thin consistency doesn't add any extra bulk like hot glue would have.
Just start with about an inch of glue on the inside of the outer hoop.
Now, just tightly wrap the fabric around the hoop, overlapping the fabric as you go. I started as close to the end as possible, wrapping my fabric over the metal "L" bracket.
Then, when needed, add more glue and continue wrapping.
When you get to the end of your fabric strip, apply some glue to the fabric as well as the hoop to secure the end.
Then, start the new strip of fabric over the top of the first.
Continue around, adding fabric strips as needed, until you get to the end.
At the end, trim your fabric so it's long enough to finish on the inside of the hoop and glue it in place. Beware, your fabric strips will unravel a little as you wrap. I just used my embroidery scissors and trimmed the threads off.
Next, I trimmed the embroidered fabric to a little less than a 1/2 inch.
I did not wait for the school glue to be dry before putting my hoops back together. Just make sure everything is lined up perfectly and then tighten the screw.
Using a low-temp hot glue gun, I applied a small amount of hot glue to the inner hoop and gently pressed down the fabric with my fingers, making little folds here and there where needed.
The final thing to do was to hot glue on my crochet accents and I was done.
