Originally Posted by Roben

What you're looking for is a basting stitch function on your machine or a basting stitch file for your machine format. Check your machine manual to see if it has a basting function for the embroidery mode. On my Viking, for example, pushing the Fix button before beginning the embroidery, the machine will baste all the way around the embroidery design area.

If your machine doesn't have this function, there are some basting stitch files available - essentially an embroidery design of just a basting stitch for different hoop sizes. An internet search for "AAA Basting file" (replace the AAA with the embroidery file extension your machine uses, like pes or jef) should turn up some of those files.