Finish It Friday: Making a Fabric-Wrapped Hoopla

Turning your finished stitching into a hoopla is quick and easy, but what can you do if a wooden hoop doesn't really fit the tone of your project? Cover the wood, of course!

Washi tape, ribbon, and fabric all make good choices for changing the look of your hoop. For today's tutorial, I'm creating a fabric-wrapped hoop to frame our little Valentine Swirls project.

Materials:

Stitched project
Wooden hoop large enough to allow all of your project to show - here I'm using a 4 inch hoop
Quilting fabric - the amount you need will vary with the size of your hoop, but I used almost 44 inches (the full width-of-bolt of the fabric) to cover a 4 inch hoop
Sewing thread in a color that either matches or complements your project
Iron
Wool felt to back your project
Ribbon to create a hanger

Step 1: Determine the width of your "fabric tape"

The first thing you'll need to do is decide on how wide you want your fabric wrap - the wider your wrap, the fewer wrappings you'll need to cover your hoop. I wanted a fairly narrow tape, so I cut a 1 inch strip off of my yard of fabric, giving me a strip that was 1 inch by approximately 44 inches long. A stripe from a jelly roll pre-cut would also work here - you could leave it at 2.5 inches wide, or cut it down.

Step 2: Create your "fabric tape"

Now we need to fold our fabric in half, and sew our two long ends together. You can either do this with a sewing machine or by hand. My sewing machine is too buried right now to dig out, so I used a simple blanket stitch to sew the two sides of my fabric together. I now have a double-sided piece of fabric that is approximately half an inch in width,

If you decide to hand-sew your tape like I did, you'll want to keep your blanket-stitches close to the edge of the fabric, so they don't show up when you wrap your hoop.

To give your tape a nice clean edge, iron it after you finish sewing.

Step 3: Create your backing felt and wrap that hoop!

Trace the inside of the outer hoop onto your felt, and put aside (we'll cut this out later for the hoopla backing). Now, it's time to start wrapping!

Start up next to one of the screws, and start wrapping your fabric tape around your hoop. I found I did not need any glue to hold the end in place, but you can, of course, add some at the beginning if you are worried about it slipping.

Pull the fabric tight as you wrap, and keep an eye on how much tape you have left as you go around - you may have to start over if your wraps are too close together. I placed mine so they just covered the blanket stitches.

Step 4: Insert Your Stitching

When you finish wrapping, make sure you keep the tape in the back of the hoop, then carefully insert your project into the hoop. You may need to leave the hoop screw out of the hoop entirely to get the outer hoop around your project, depending on the thickness of your stitching and quilting fabrics. Before you put the screw back in and tighten it down, pull your stitching fabric nice and tight, and make sure your project is centered in the hoop.

Step 5: Trim Your Stitching Fabric and Fabric Tape

Next, trim away your excess stitching fabric, and any extra length of your fabric tape. You don't have to be terribly precise here - I eyeballed mine, aiming for between 1 and 2 inches of fabric, enough to tuck into the back of the frame without it overlapping.

Step 6: Cut Out and Attach Backing Felt

Now it's time to pull out that piece of felt we traced the hoop circle on and cut the circle out. With all the excess stitching fabric and fabric tape tucked into the back of the frame, attach your felt by using whip stitches through the fabric tape. I used the same sewing thread I used to blanket stitch the fabric tape together above, but I think next time I would probably use Nymo - I needed to pull my thread a bit to get my felt circle to cover the way I wanted it to, and my thread did break once. With Nymo that would not have been an issue.

Step 7: Add a Ribbon Hanger and You're Done!

All that's left is adding a ribbon hanger, and your fabric-wrapped hoopla is read to gift or hang! I actually removed the metal screw from my hoop at this point, and tied the hoop ends together with the ribbon before making my little bow. The felt back is doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to keeping the outer hoop in place, so I'm not concerned about it coming apart, and I didn't like how the brass screw looked with this project.

Have you tried your hand at a hoopla finish before? Leave a comment below with a link to your project so we can check out your fabulous work!