Often times, when we are stitch multiple appliques in a single hoop we may want to combine the steps. No worries. What you can do, is make the steps you want to combine the same color. That would be the placement step, step one and the the tack down step, step two. Once this is done, you would then color sort the design. Then depending on the overlap, all the colors that are the same will combine into a single color change. Waa-laa! This will limit the number number of times you have to take the hoop on and off the machinewhich cuts down the amount of time your design will take. I hope this is helpful!