The Book and Crafts Review Corner: Punch-Needle Patterns & Kits Bought and Reviewed

I just love trying all sorts of different crafts and was introduced to punch needle several years ago while shopping at a colonial store in Sturbridge with my mom. We were in one of our favorite stores in Sturbridge which sold all sorts of colonial fabrics, patterns, and craft kits.

When we went up to the register to pay for our patterns there was a woman who was seated behind the counter working at something with a tool we hadn't seen before. So, of course, we asked her what it was.

Well, it turns out it was a punch needle pen that she was using to make a tiny punch needle picture. She asked us if we wanted to learn how to use the pen and we, of course, nodded our heads, We loved it and, of course, I ended up buying some punch needle patterns, a punch needle pen, and embroidery floss.

I finished my first few punch-needle kit rather quickly and decided to buy more kits for some of the handmade Christmas presents I was giving to my Mother, Sister, and Sister-In-Law that year.

As I was working on my punch-needle kits I kept thinking about how I wanted to finish my pictures.

You see, punch-needle is basically the weaving of DMC embroidery floss onto a preprinted even weave type fabric to create a specific picture. So, I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to finish my pictures.

Did I want to use picture frames and a mat, cloth, or wood? Did I want them hung on a wall like a picture or create a stand alone box?

I decided to create wood frames for my punch-needle pictures that were capable of standing alone on a bookshelf. So, I enlisted the help of my younger brother and his amazing workshop to build my wood borders and to finish my punch-needle pictures.

The first frame took us a little longer than all the rest to work out all the kinks, but we got it down and completing the rest was relatively easy as we decided to wrap the punch needle to size around a 1/4" wood square and then create a border around that. We also decided to use a box inset to create a framed affect. The borders were painted and then I added heavy fabric wallpaper to finish the backs.

I ended up giving quite a few punch needle gifts over the years.

Shown below are the punch-needle patterns and kits I have bought and created so far: