Embroidery hoop size chart (mm and inches) and how to check if a design fits

Every hoop has two sizes: the plastic or metal frame you can measure with a ruler, and the sewing field the needle can actually reach. Manufacturers name hoops by the field, sometimes rounded to inches, and machines refuse designs that exceed it. This chart lists the field for the common hoops of six brand groups in millimetres and inches, then explains how to check whether a specific file fits before you hoop anything.

The full chart

Fields are the manufacturers' stated embroidery areas; the last column subtracts our recommended 3 mm clearance on each side. Values are what our hoop checker uses. Where a hoop is a named accessory (Janome SQ20, Bernina Jumbo) the field is the one printed in the machine or hoop documentation; check your manual if your machine came with a different frame.

Sewing field versus physical hoop

The frame of a Brother 4x4 hoop is roughly 130 mm across the outside, and the inner opening is larger than 100 mm too. The field is the 100 × 100 mm rectangle the carriage can move the needle through with the presser foot clear of the frame. Everything outside that rectangle is fabric you can see but cannot stitch. The same applies to every brand: a Janome RE20 hoop opening is bigger than its 200 × 280 mm field, and the commercial cap frame in the table above has a field of roughly 60 × 360 mm on a frame that is much taller.

This matters when you buy a design. Listings that say "fits 4x4" mean the stitched area is within 100 × 100 mm, and usually a bit less. A design listed as 3.9 × 3.9 in is 99 × 99 mm and will sit hard against the field edge.

Inch names are nominal. A "5x7" field is 130 × 180 mm, which is 5.1 × 7.1 in; the "6x10" is 160 × 260 mm, or 6.3 × 10.2 in. When a machine screen or a manual gives millimetres, trust those over the inch name.

The 3 mm clearance rule

Our fit check passes a design when its width plus 6 mm is at most the field width, and the same for height. In other words 3 mm of empty field on every side. The engine flags a fit as tight when the remaining margin is under 8 mm, which is a warning rather than a failure.

Three things eat that margin. The presser foot and needle plate have physical clearance to the frame, and machines add a small safety band inside the stated field. The fabric pulls in under stitching, and for applique the outer satin rail is pushed outward by pull compensation (0.25 mm on woven, 0.40 mm on knit, 0.15 mm on felt in our engine) so the finished border is slightly larger than the artwork. And the position you set on the machine screen is rounded to the machine's step, typically 0.1 mm or coarser on entry models.

Designs that exactly fill the field can stitch, but the last row of satin is where a needle strike on the frame or a skipped area happens. Keeping 3 mm back costs nothing on a 100 mm field and removes that failure.

Rotation

A rectangular field has a long and a short axis, and a design that fails one way often fits the other. The checker tests both: it first tries the design as-is, then swapped, and reports "fits rotated" when only the second works. A 170 × 120 mm design fails a 130 × 180 mm field as-is (170 is more than 130) but fits rotated (120 plus 6 is under 130, 170 plus 6 is under 180).

On the machine, rotation is a button on the edit screen. Brother's PE800 manual notes that a design larger than 18 × 13 cm is displayed rotated 90 degrees when it is read out, and that a design that still does not fit after rotation cannot be used. Rotating changes nothing about stitch quality for fills and satins, but for applique it changes which way you cut fabric with a directional print, so rotate the cut file the same way.

When a design is too big

There are two honest options and one that looks like an option.

Splitting: software that supports multi-position or multi-hoop layouts can divide a design into pieces stitched in two hoopings with alignment marks. This is the right answer for large lettering and for designs with a natural gap. It needs a multi-position hoop your machine actually supports, so check your manual for which frames the model accepts; the checker does not attempt splits.

Regenerating smaller: for applique the best route is to go back to the artwork and generate the file at the size that fits, because the satin width, underlay spacing and cut allowance are then chosen for that size. The studio at /app lets you set the longest side from 20 to 400 mm and shows the finished width and height including the satin band.

Scaling the stitch file: this is the option that looks easy. Shrinking by 10 to 20 percent is common practice and usually stitches; beyond that the stitch count stays the same while the area shrinks with the square of the scale, so density climbs and thread breaks follow. The resizing guide has the numbers.

Checking a file before you hoop it

The hoop fit checker opens the stitch file on your device, reads the minimum and maximum needle positions from the stitch data, and compares that box to every preset above with the 3 mm clearance. It does not read the size from the file name or the header thumbnail, which is why it is right for files a shop resaved or cropped. You get the design size in millimetres, the list of hoops that fit ordered by field area, whether each needs rotation, and which fits are tight.

1. Drop the PES, DST, JEF, EXP, VP3, HUS, XXX or PEC file on the checker. Nothing is uploaded.
2. Read the width and height it reports. Compare with the shop listing; a 1 to 2 mm difference is normal because listings quote design size before pull compensation.
3. Filter by brand if you want a short list, and note any fit marked tight.
4. If it fits only rotated, rotate on the machine screen and, for applique, rotate the fabric cut the same way.

Brand by brand

Brother / Baby Lock

The PE535, SE600 and SE700 have a 4x4 field only; the PE800 and PE900 have 5x7 and accept the 4x4 frame too (Brother USA product pages and operation manuals). Baby Lock machines share the hoop family: the Flare has a 6.25 x 10.25 in field, Luna and Ursa 8 x 14 in, and Reflection 9.5 x 14 in per babylock.com. The 272 × 408 mm field belongs to the Luminaire and Solaris flagships. The Brother PE800, PE535, SE600 and SE700 guide covers what fits in those two fields for applique.

Janome

Janome letters its hoops. The Memory Craft 500E ships with RE28b (7.9 x 11 in, 200 × 280 mm), SQ20b, RE20b and SQ14b; the 550E adds the RE36b at 7.9 x 14.2 in (janome.com product pages). Older machines use the A, B and C hoops in the table. JEF files carry a hoop flag in the header, so the machine may warn if the file was saved for a larger hoop than the one attached; the Janome JEF guide explains how to handle that.

Bernina

Bernina hoops are named Medium, Large oval, Mega and Jumbo. The fields above are the ones our checker uses; Bernina's support pages could not be retrieved while writing this, so confirm the field for your module in the manual, especially for the oval hoops where the usable rectangle is smaller than the frame suggests.

Husqvarna Viking / Pfaff

Viking and Pfaff share hoop sizes across the Designer and Creative lines. The 360 × 200 mm field is the largest in the presets; some flagship models list a larger field, so check your manual. VP3 files do not carry a hoop flag the way JEF does.

Singer

Singer's fields follow the Brother naming for the small sizes. XXX is the native format; check your manual for the exact frames supplied with your model.

Commercial (Tajima / Ricoma / Melco)

Commercial machines use round hoops for small work, cap frames whose usable field varies by frame and by machine, and large rectangular frames. The cap frame row is a placeholder; measure yours or check the frame documentation, because the curved field is the one place where the preset can be wrong by tens of millimetres.

Applique sizes that fit comfortably

For applique the design size includes the satin border. A 100 mm heart from the studio, at the default 4 mm satin, does not fit a 4x4 field with clearance; set the longest side to about 85 mm for 4x4 and the finished size lands under 94 mm. A 5x7 field takes the default 100 mm with room, and up to roughly 120 mm wide or 170 mm tall once rotated. Below 80 mm the stitch-out prediction drops because the same 0.68 mm cut and placement error is a bigger fraction of the piece, so on a 4x4 machine the sweet spot is 80 to 90 mm with careful placement.