I knew I should have taken pics today when I did my shirts because I don't hoop tshirts like the PP does from this mornings post. awesome tutorial, btw. I think on SWAK.com there is a video tute on doing knits, and maybe
YouTube. I know they're out there someplace because I read and watched many of them before I got brave enough to try it myself.
I can try to explain, if that helps at all...
To find the center of my tshirt front I fold it in half down the center front by matching the side seams, if there aren't any I'll use the underarm seam as a guide and then iron side seam guide lines. I press the center front to make a very straight line...if you do it right it usually follows the grain of the knit. My stabilizer is hopped and sprayed well with temporary adhesive...I've found the Sulky brand to work best for me, the others I've tried have gummed up the needle enough to shred the thread, once I switched to Sulky I no longer had that problem. My machine has a display that shows the direction the design will be stitched in, so i have to make the attachment side of the hoop in the correct direction when placing the shirt on the hoop. This matters so you don't have an upside-down or sideways design. Once you know what direction to have your hoop, use the ironed in crease as your vertical center...I just eyeball where I want the real center to be, but the top of the hoop is usually 2-3 inches from the neckband on adult sizes. My hoop has little bumps marking the center of all sides, i use these to line up the center crease, and then smooth out all the wrinkles. My hoop had adhesive on it too, so I make sure the shirt is stuck smoothly to that as well. very carefully pull the back of the shirt over the top of the hoop, trying not to dislodge the stuck part, and attach to your machine. I move all the excess shirt out of the way, sometimes having to hold it to keep it out of the way, and then use a basting stitch to keep it all in place. SWAK has these free to download. You are now ready to do your design. The number one rule for embroidery on tshirts is you have to babysit the machine from start to finish. Even if looks like it won't get caught, every time I look away for a second, it eats my shirt! This seems to be a common problem with everyone, and the smaller shirts are more likely to do this.
The Belle is awesome!
I got it fixed once before, but it cost half as much as I paid for it. I turned it off and went to get Claire from the bus stop. Worked on it a while and couldn't get it to work. 
