You do have to hoop one or the other. Even with a magna hoop, you hoop the stabilizer. You are reading about NOT hooping the project. ;)

I also don't understand not hooping the material I always hoop the material unless it is stretch or towels and then I stick it to the stabelizer

With Hoopless,You lightly spray the stabilizer with 505 temporary fabric adhesive and hoop the sprayed stabilizer only.Gently lay the fabric down on the hooped stabilizer, matching up the center marks and the arrow marks on the hoop. Do not stretch the fabric or distort the fabric. Lay it down again if needed until it is correct. Before you embroider, it helps to do a FIX(basting stitch) all around the design area. This shows you that the design is centered and in the correct spot, and also helps keep the fabric from shifting.Hoopless method saves wear and tear on your hoop and is much easier.

As Jrob said, you have to hoop SOMETHING. When people say they didn't hoop their project, it means they only hoop the stabilizer. The main reason for doing this is because the project is something bulky (towels, bathrobes, and so forth) or it is a material that would show a "hoop burn" (impossible to remove marks from being hooped) like velvet would. Yes, people use the spray adhesive to do "hoopless" projects, but it is far from the only way to do it. You can use fabric glue sticks (check the quilting section of your store), use sticky stabilizer (hoop it and then carefully remove the protective paper where the project needs to stick), use "wet and stick" stabilizer (done pretty much the same as the sticky stabilizer) or even just lay the project out carefully on the hooped stabilizer and use pins to keep it in place. After pinning it, you can either just begin your stitch-out or you can use the basting stitch that mermaid mentioned. Just be careful to keep the pins out of the sewing field. I always stay by the machine when using pins to be able to pull them out if they end up being in the way. =] One of the best things about machine embroidery is that you can use your imagination to come up with solutions to problems you might have. There is almost never just one way to do things, and the people here in this forum seem to be very good at improvising!

ditto - what cutiepie said that jrob said. Hehehe! *4U

dkjack, so sorry if we confused you, we do things like that occasionally, good you asked the question, sweetie, hugs and flowers.

If you can't use an aerosol adhesive you should still be able to use a sticky stabilizer like 'cutiepie' mentioned. And somewhere out there you can get free basting stitches to download. Help here ladies, I can never remember where those free basting stitches are cause my machine has them built in. You shouldn't confine yourself to hoopable fabrics, there are too many projects you'd miss out on. After you do your first hoopless embroidery you'see.