After looking at various Hooping Stations, I found the one I wanted was unavailable. It was being resupplied from overseas and was going to take nearly 60 days before sales could even resume here in the U.S.A.
I chose to make my own Hooping Station from a scrap of Peg Board, plywood and thin clear acrylic sheets. Here’s what I did for those handy with tools.
1. Cut my peg board in three sizes; one for large shirts, one for medium shirts and one for toddler shirts. The sizes are as follows. All are approximately 20 inches long. Small is 8 ¾” wide, Medium is 13” wide and the large is 17” wide. Each has a tapper to approximate the neck shape.
2. I mounted the pegboard templates to a piece of ¾” plywood 16” long by 15” wide base with 3 each upright cut to approximately a 45-degree angle.
3. The three pegboards slip over three ¼” dowels mounted into the uprights to hold them in place. Now some of the details.
Figure 1 (medium with acrylic hoop guide)
Figure 2 (Base with three uprights)
Figure 3 (Acrylic Hoop Guide)
Details of construction:
1. Cut out the peg board sizes allowing for the base (Figure 2) ¾” uprights to rest between the holes in the pegboard. (In other words, be sure you have ½” to ¾” solid space from the last hole to the outside of each board).
2. Next cut out your base (Figure 2) and the uprights making sure that you have a 45-degree angle. My uprights measure approximately 3 inches high allowing them to be attached to the base board and for the extended 45-degree portion they are 1 5/8” wide. I used a lid to round the shape out at the bottom. I cut the shape out on a band saw (for the curves) and a table saw (for the straight portions). I attached the three uprights over Dowel pins after all pieces were fabricated to allow for proper spacing and support for the large, medium and small peg board templates. (I put the small down first then the medium and fit the large to the medium to hold one of the three pegboard templates on the dowel pins).
3. I next traced the inside of our sewing machine sewing embroidery hoop to a piece of stock Acrylic. I cut out each size (there were three) on a band saw then used a bench mounted sander to smooth out the outer portions of the acrylic to fit in the hoop.
a. I drilled holes in the acrylic at the exact center line vertically and placed one hole 3 inches left and another 3 inches right of the vertical center (drilled on the horizontal axis). (See Figure 3).
b. I mounted Cabinet Straight Shelf Supports Pegs (6mm x 20mm) found on Amazon (less than $3 but it took over a month to get from China) with a nylon washer to secure it to the Acrylic. These pegs allow the Acrylic Hoop Guide to be inserted into the peg board holes. (NOTE: a small bolt approximately ¾” long with a washer and nut would do the same thing as the Shelf Support Pegs).
c. Lastly at the intersection of the horizontal and vertical axis on the Acrylic Hoop Guide I drilled a hole to mount a very small screw which barely goes through the material (in the exact center). This screw head allows the user to feel through the shirt to isolate the exact center on the hoop where the shirt is to be positioned in order to properly align the embroidery design.
The completed project with a medium shirt template and Acrylic Hoop Guide is shown below. Good luck. It may require a bit of finagling to get the shirt to align (you have a 1-inch by 1-inch area between peg holes to work with) but it will hold the machine hoop in place while you set the shirt and outer hoop ring.
Sorry the images didn't copy over. Post back with a means to email it to you if you want a PDF of this post.
Any guidance would be muchly appreciated.
