Punch Needle Embroidery Part II

This photo above is of a quilt pattern called Autumn Eyes by Toni Whitney. I purchased this pattern last year around August with the intentions of making this 32" X 31" wall hanging as a Christmas gift for my mother who loves all things bears. But as I was hunting for just the right fabrics for this beauty I was having trouble finding what I wanted and time was quickly running out for getting this ambitious project done in time for Christmas giving.

The Photo below is of the pattern and as you can see there are many tiny pieces to be put together, when I first pulled the pattern out of the package I gasped for air and though to myself, I must be nuts.
I quickly realized that without finding just the right fabrics for this quilt I wasn't going to get it done for Christmas and needed to choose another project I could do in the time that was left and that's when it hit me, I could do this in punch needle in half the time if I made it smaller and turned it into a pillow that would match the quilt when I do finish that.

So I took the pattern to my local Kinko's and had it shrunk to a 12" x 12" image and started my hunt for the yarns the same day. It took me a month to gather all the yarns from many stores, I traveled miles just to find what I was looking for and when we went on vacation to visit family in Iowa I found most of the yarn in a tiny store there that carried just what I was looking for. I selected in all, over 100 different colors for this piece and most of those were hand dyed wools that were variegated.

Once I had all the yarns I chose an even weave background fabric in a light green shade that would work well with all the colors of yarn. I taped the paper pattern to my sliding glass door on a sunny day and then taped the fabric over that and using a black quilting pen I traced the entire pattern to the fabric, this took hours. Once I was done with that I stretched the fabric over stretcher bars and stapled it in place. I started in the center and worked my out working one section at a time till it was all done and picture below is of the finished pillow.


This was a great project and I plan to do many more Punch Needle projects in the future. By the way I now have all the fabric for the quilt and working on that this year so stay tuned for the blogs on the matching quilt.

Thanks for reading.

June 19,2009

Last year I went into my LYS and found on display a craft I'd only heard about but never had the opportunity to see up close, Punch Needle Embroidery. This is very easy to do and works up quickly. Above is a close up of my first project and below is my first project agian but with the needle used to create this included. The was what I did for practice before I started the project I purchased.

All I did was find a picture I liked and traced the pattern onto a scrap piece of muslin by taping it all to my sliding glass door and using a quilting marker to trace with. For the center, leaf, I used a variegated DMC floss that I had left over from a cross stitch project and I am very happy with the result. The deep red inside border and black outer border are also DMC leftovers.

The needle is hollow and threaded from the bottom of the handle up through the top, there is an eye at the top of the needle you pull the thread through. After that all you do is punch down through the fabric and up again until the whole picture is filled in. The project is worked from the back, this leaves loops on the front, (right side). I know these aren't the best pictures but you may be able to see the loops in the top photo. These pictures were taken last year before I got my new camera. This whole project took me only an hour from start to finish and is a lot of fun!

I liked it so much in fact, that I skipped doing the project I first purchased and jumped into something a little more challenging. But I will save this for the next post so I can get some better pictures. Sorry for the suspence ;)