Superhero Hoop Art

Superheros Rock - and my two nephews particularly love superheros.  They were superheros for Halloween, they have superhero bedsheets, and now they have some cool superhero artwork for their room!

I had a great time making hoop art for them for Christmas, and here's a quick explanation on how I made these guys...

I purchased three 7" wood embroidery hoops from the craft store for a couple dollars each.  
I wanted the hoops to have color to frame the artwork, so I wrapped each in a bright, superhero color using the following method.

1) Cut a strip of fabric a little over 2" wide (you might need to adjust the width if your hoops are bigger/smaller) and just make sure the strip is plenty long to wrap around the hoop.  Fold over the starting short edge by 1/4" and hot glue it down (see pic below)

2) You will wrap only the outer hoop - so begin at the opening - where the hardware is.  Glue the raw edge pretty close to the top inner edge of the hoop.  

3) Hot glue all the way around the inner edge until you get back to the opening at the top.  Trim your length of fabric so that you have a 1/4" overlap that you can fold under to remove the raw edge.  Hot glue it down.  Do not overlap the fabric ends.  You want to leave that opening with no fabric covering it.  

4) Wrap the strip of fabric all the way around the outside of the hoop, pulling it tight toward the inside.  Hot glue the strip down on the inside edge (you will be hot gluing directly over the hot glue line used to secure the first edge).  Try to use a thin, even line of glue.  

Once you go all the way around, it will look like the picture below.  (Ignore the white part of the fabric below.  I should not have used the selvedge edge of the fabric!  And neither should you ;) )

5) Once the outside of each of your hoop has a fabric wrap around it, you might need to make the inner hoop smaller.  Because of the bulk of the fabric, I could no longer fit the inner hoop inside.  I simply used scissors to snip out a small piece of the inner hoop (between 1/4" and 1/2") and then hot glued the hoop back together.  

Now you can make some fun superhero artwork!  

My first was made using freezer paper stencils on plain white fabric.  I happened to cut these stencils with my Silhouette, but you could use any type of stencil - even handmade.  You could also simply find superhero fabric that you like and stretch that inside the frame.  
Below, you can see partway through the process.  I layered each section of stencil, used different bright colored acrylic paint, and was able to get the right size, with just the words and layout that I wanted.

Below, it is all stretched inside the embroidery hoop and tightened.  Boom!
Make sure the metal hardware is at the top, because it can be hung from a nail right at that spot - easy!

To finish off the back, I cut a circle of white felt, just a hair smaller than my hoop, and hot glued all around the edge to cover the back of the fabric.  

My second hoop was simply different colored fabric sewn together, a little ric-rac trim, a cape shape cutout, and some freehand stitching.  I did use my sewing machine, and my free-motion quilting foot.  You could definitely embroider some words by hand.  There are lots of great "superhero" quotes and I had a hard time picking one.  I decided to go with the simple "A superhero sleeps here" phrase...

My last hoop is probably my favorite.  I stumbled upon the Wee Little Stitches shop and fell in love!  They have a ton of different character patterns, and the cross stitch is simple enough, even for a beginner.  It was fairly quick work, and fits perfectly inside the little embroidery hoop.  If you really like it, this particular pattern is free!

The great thing about hoop art is that it is funky, and can be anything you imagine!  Use fabric, use patches, use embroidery or cross stitch, make it giant or tiny...

Miss matched styles and sizes are fun - especially when you pair a few of them together in one space.  

Make your little superhero buddy really happy with his (or her) own, personalized hoop art!  

Hope you enjoy!

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