Hoop sizes are one of the most confusing parts of buying designs and machines, because the names are rounded inches and every brand has its own set.
What “hoop size” means
The size of a hoop is its stitching area (or embroidery field): the largest design the machine can sew in it without rehooping. As Echidna Sewing explains, it refers to the embroidery area of the hoop rather than its physical size. The frame itself is always bigger.
The inch names are rounded. A Brother “5×7” is 130 × 180 mm, which is 5.1 × 7.1 inches. When you size a design, use the millimeters.
Brother hoop sizes (flat-bed machines)
| Name | Stitching area (mm) |
|---|---|
| 4” × 4” | 100 × 100 |
| 4” × 7” | 100 × 180 |
| 5” × 7” | 130 × 180 |
| 5½” × 5½” | 150 × 150 |
| 6” × 10” | 160 × 260 |
| 7” × 12” | 180 × 300 |
| 8” × 8” | 200 × 200 |
| 8” × 12” | 200 × 300 |
| 9½” × 9½” | 240 × 240 |
| 9½” × 14” | 240 × 360 |
| 10” × 10” | 254 × 254 |
Source: Echidna Sewing. Which hoops fit depends on your model: a machine with a 5×7 field can’t use a bigger hoop.
Janome hoop sizes
| Name | Stitching area (mm) |
|---|---|
| 4” × 4” | 100 × 100 |
| 5½” × 5½” | 140 × 140 |
| 5½” × 8” | 140 × 200 |
| 6½” × 8” | 170 × 200 |
| 8” × 8” | 200 × 200 |
| 8” × 11” | 200 × 280 |
| 11” × 11” | 280 × 280 |
| 11” × 18” | 280 × 460 |
Source: Echidna Sewing. Janome names its hoops with codes (for example SQ14 or RE20); check the code against your manual, because hoops with similar names can differ between models.
Commercial multi-needle machines
Commercial machines have much larger fields. Tajima’s single-head TMBP2-SC, for example, lists an embroidery field of 360 × 500 mm. Caps and tubular items use their own frames with smaller areas; check the specifications of your machine and frame.
How to check that a design fits
- Open the design file and look at its width and height. Our free embroidery viewer shows the size of a DST, PES, JEF, EXP or VP3 file in your browser.
- Compare it with the stitching area of your hoop, leaving a margin of a few millimeters on each side.
- If it doesn’t fit, don’t just shrink a stitch file a lot: the density changes. Ask for a version digitized at the right size.
More on that in our guide to embroidery file formats.