Thread&Feed
Menu
B

Piece B

Embroidery machines

An embroidery machine stitches a digitized design inside a hoop. The size of the embroidery field sets the largest design you can stitch in one hooping, and the number of needles sets how often you rethread for color changes.

Common hobby fields
4x4 in (100 x 100 mm) and 5x7 in (130 x 180 mm)
Common file formats
PES Brother, JEF Janome, DST multi-needle

Compare machines by embroidery field, the area the needle can reach inside the hoop, not by the outer size of the hoop. A 4x4 hoop stitches about 100 x 100 mm, a 5x7 about 130 x 180 mm and a 6x10 about 160 x 260 mm. The hoop size guide checks a design against the common fields.

Single-needle machines stop at every color change so you can rethread. Many are combination machines that also sew. Multi-needle machines hold several colors at once, usually 4 to 15, and often take tubular hoops for shirts and a cap frame for hats, which suits a small embroidery business.

Each brand reads its own file format, such as PES on Brother and Baby Lock or JEF on Janome. Design software can convert between formats, but resizing a design by more than about 10 to 20 percent can distort it unless the software recalculates the stitches.

Embroidery fields of 4x4, 5x7, 6x10 and 8x12 hoops drawn to scale, sharing one corner8x126x105x74x44x4 hoop100 x 100 mm3.9 x 3.9 in5x7 hoop130 x 180 mm5.1 x 7.1 in6x10 hoop160 x 260 mm6.3 x 10.2 in8x12 hoop200 x 300 mm7.9 x 11.8 in2 in (50.8 mm) at this scale
Stitch fields, not outer hoop sizes. Exact fields vary a little by brand and model, so check your machine's manual.

Common mistakes

  • Buying for the hoop's outer size and finding the embroidery field is smaller.
  • Skipping stabilizer, which leads to puckering and outlines that do not line up.
  • Scaling a design far up or down without recalculating stitch density.

Pages on this topic

Machine guides for this topic