Your First Machine Embroidery Project

This tutorial will teach you the basic steps of embroidering a design on your embroidery machine. Follow along to feel a little more confident as you work on your first projects.

First, you’ll need to decide what you want to embroider on. We are going to stitch this design onto a towel.

You can embroider on pre-made items like this if they have enough of a flat area to hoop. You can also embroider onto a piece of fabric if you’re using the design in a sewing project.

When picking a design, pay attention to the design’s dimensions and file formats to make sure the design is compatible with your embroidery machine.

Picking the design is the fun part! There are so many options so you can really make your project personal to you and one-of-a-kind. We are going to use this Floral Feline - Moon Lounging Kitty from Urban Threads.

Stabilizer helps to keep the fabric from moving around, contracting, and stretching while the design embroiders. It comes in different types like cutaway, tearaway, or wash-soluble. Cutaway stabilizers work great for most projects.

Stabilizers also come in different weights that can be used for different densities of designs. Embroidery designs with less stitching can use lighter weight stabilizer and designs with more stitching need heavier weight stabilizer.

Most designs work well using a medium weight cutaway stabilizer. That is what we are using for our design.

Cut a piece of stabilizer that is larger than the embroidery hoop. Spray it with temporary adhesive and smooth it into place on the wrong side of the project or fabric behind the area where you will be embroidering.

A template, or printout, of the design is an excellent tool to help with placement. Print a template using embroidery software of the design at size.

It can help to note where the top of the design is so it doesn’t get rotated incorrectly when positioning the template.

We recommend Wilcom's Hatch software which comes in different levels depending on what you'd like to use the software for. Hatch organizer works well to view your designs, print dielines and templates, change design colors, and create basic design layouts. (This is an affiliate link. We may earn commission on purchases made with this link.)

Position the template on your project exactly where you would like it to sew. Using a fabric marking tool, mark the vertical and horizontal axis lines on the fabric with dots or small lines. Also poke a small hole in the paper template and mark the center point onto the fabric as well.

Connect and extend the vertical and horizontal axis lines using a ruler and fabric marking tool. To make hooping easier, make sure to extend the lines past the size of the hoop.

To hoop your fabric, lay the outer hoop on the table and lay the fabric and stabilizer on top of it. Set your top hoop on top of the fabric and line it up with the axis lines you drew and extended earlier.

Once everything is lined up, snap the hoops together and tighten the screw if needed. The fabric and stabilizer should be hooped securely in the hoop and not loose at all if you lift the hoop and gently tap on the fabric.

To get your embroidery machine setup, download your chosen embroidery design onto a USB stick, and plug the USB stick into your machine. Turn it on and pull up the design in your machine’s menu.

Wind a bobbin with bobbin thread that is made for machine embroidery. Insert the wound bobbin into your embroidery machine.

Check the color change sheet for your chosen design and collect all the thread you will need. Load the thread you will be using first onto your machine, and thread it through the needle.

Attach the hoop onto the embroidery machine. To make sure the design is sewing exactly where you marked, move the needle using the controls in the machine until it is perfectly centered over the center point of the axis lines.

Press the start button and the machine will begin to embroider the design. It will keep going until the first color is done sewing out.

After the first color is done sewing, you might notice some jump stitches between areas like this.

Some machines trim these automatically, but if yours does not, you can just cut them with scissors. If trimming them yourself, it is best to do it after each color has embroidered. If you trim them all at the end, they can sometimes be sewn under another thread color, making them harder to trim.

Our chosen design only has one thread color.
If your design has multiple colors, simply follow the color change sheet and thread each thread color onto your embroidery machine before embroidering it. Continue until you have embroidered the entire design.

After your design is finished embroidering, take the hoop off the machine and unhoop the fabric.

The last step is removing the excess stabilizer from the back of the embroidered fabric. For cutaway stabilizer like we used here, carefully cut closely around the design to remove the extra stabilizer.

Your embroidery is finished! These are just the basics and there are always more fun things to learn as you explore more materials, projects, and stabilizers. Follow this guide again and again to help you create many beautiful, embroidered projects.