I always prefer the very densely embroidered designs and I follow the rule of one layer of stabilizer for every 10,000 stitches unless the fabric is heavy like a denim. I cannot stand to see even a tiny pucker. I starch, stabilize, stabilize and and stabilize and stabilize sometimes 6-8 layers. Baste your fabric and stabilizer before you hoop if your test piece has a pucker. Never judge your test piece until you have washed, dried and pressed it. Always embroider your block BEFORE it is cut to size. It is hard to hoop smaller sizes and embroidering will shrink the size of a block even if it is 16x16.