Punch Needle Embroidery

Have you ever heard of Punch Needle technique? 

Don’t worry, I heard about it few years ago. When I saw tool for Needle punching, I remembered that my father had one. 
Yeah, my father likes to try all kinds of crafting techniques (guess where I got it from 🤓🙌🏻). 

Okay, let’s get back to Punch Needle. 
This is what internet says about this technique: 

Punch Needle is a tool used for embroidery. It is Long hollow stem with a long needle and different thickness of the needle.
Yarn is inserted trough the hollow stem and eye on the end of the needle. 
There is no need to cut yarn into certain length and no knots are needed.
The idea is to punch trough woven fabric, which is a foundation for project. Punch needle is creating loops of yarn on both side of fabric.  

When I was ordering my Punch Needle, I didn’t have many options to choose from but today you can fins Punch Needle in on all kinds of length, sizes, adjustable options for depth of needle to control yarn loops length.
Punch Needle is hold as a pen. Good thing for us left-handed it is UNI 😃

Punch Needle Embroidery is related to rug hooking. You can even find different names as needle punch embroiders, needle punching, or I also found needle punch rug hooking.

If you know how rug hooking looks like, than you will understand why this technique might be called needle punch rug hooking.
Let me explain, when we want to do punch needle, we need to have our design already drawn on fabric and fabric has to be stretched. Now by punching needle trough the fabric we will create loops on reverse side of fabric which looks very much like a rug.  

Regarding history, punch needle is dating back hundreds of years (maybe even more). Fine embroidery was used to decorate garments and later with a thicker yarns also rugs.

I have already tried couple of projects, I love the technique, you can create beautiful things with this technique and not only decorative also accessory or clothing. 

Let me show you what do you need for starters.


We need: 

• Cotton pillow case 
• Yarn (thickness depends on Punch needle you have)
• Punch Needle
• Scissors
• Embroidery frame (to stretch the fabric)
• Pencil to draw your design

First we will draw our design on a fabric and then we will stretch it in Embroidery frame.




We will insert yarn into Punch needle (again, it depends on what kind of Punch Needle you have, it will we best for you to follow instructions which came with punch needle, if you don’t have them, you can write me on IG and I will explain😊).
Now we can start needle punching.

 
This is how reverse side of first flower design looks like. It is front side, this is what I will see when I finish needle punching.
It depends on you, what structure you want to have. It is either like a rug, the one you see on the photo or clean which you can see on the previous photo.


I made it a bit complicated since I wanted to have rug like design and clean design on the same side, which means I had to draw my design on both sides of a fabric. 
You can create beautiful things with punch needle technique.
It is important to practice first on piece of a fabric, not on your actual piece 🤓 to see how it works, what can you do with it, how to hold it, how to punch, what length is fine, what length do you actually like, and so on 😊👍🏻


And these are my result of needle punching 🤓 once you start, you won’t stop 🙈