Keeping your hand embroidery fabric tight and stable prevents puckering and warping of your design. One way to keep your fabric tight is to secure it in a hand embroidery hoop. Binding your embroidery hoops (the inner hoop, outer hoop, or both) increases their effectiveness, creating a thick cushion to better grip your fabric and keep it drum tight while you stitch.
1. Cut scrap fabric into 2-4 inch (5.1-10.2cm) wide strips. The necessary length required will depend on the size of the hoop you wish to bind and how thick you want your binding to be. Strips longer than 24 inches (61cm) can be cumbersome to wind. Combine multiple strips if needed.
2. Begin winding the fabric strip around the inner embroidery hoop, keeping the fabric as smooth as possible as it overlaps itself. Each wind of the fabric will overlap and secure the bound section before it. Increase the amount of overlap to build up a thicker bind.
3. Continue winding the fabric around the hoop until you return to where you began the binding. Overlap the start of the bind by a couple of winds and cut away excess length of the fabric strip.
4. Use a full thickness (6 strands) of embroidery floss to secure the tail of the binding to the beginning of the binding with a few running stitches.
5. Tie the two ends of the thread to secure. Trim the thread tails and any extra fabric to tidy up the bind.
