2 ways to use punchneedle embroidery to embellish quilt projects

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I showed you how you can use Razzle and Dazzle threads from WonderFil to do punchneedle embroidery. As I said yesterday, I LOVE doing punchneedle and have come up with quite a few ways that they can be incorporated into finished projects. Today I’m going to show you my two favorite ways to use them to embellish quilt projects.

Here’s the finished punchneedle embroidery! I just loved how easy it was to use the Razzle and Dazzle threads in my punchneedle and how the looked in the finished piece. That little glimmer of metallic in the Dazzle thread adds bling and texture to the design and the Razzle threads add dimension and texture.

The whole piece didn’t take too long to stitch and it was a nice change from all of the machine work I’ve been doing lately.

Adding borders

Since the base of the embroidery is fabric, these punchneedle pieces can be sewn into a quilt or pillow by sewing borders to the weaver’s cloth. I’ve done many pieces where I have just trimmed the weaver’s cloth and sewn borders on to make my finished project. Here are a few examples:

To sew the punchneedle into a quilt like I’ve done in the examples above, all you need to do is to trim the weaver’s cloth so that it’s the same width all around the embroidery piece. If you want more of the weaver’s cloth to show, you just cut it wider all the way around. Then you cut your borders, the same as you would for a quilt block. Sew two opposite borders to the piece, press, then sew on your remaining two borders.

Appliqueing the punchneedle in place

The second way I add puncheedle embroderies to my quilts is to applique them on. I LOVE adding them to wool backgrounds or to flannel wall hangings! You can also applique them to bags or jackets. Once you’ve followed the steps below, the punchneedle can be glued to a mason jar, or a wooden plaque. The possibilities are endless!

Step 1 – trim

The first thing you need to do is to loosely trim the excess weaver’s cloth from your embroidery. Don’t worry about being too accurate, just make sure that you leave about 1″ around all four sides.

Step 2 – fold in the corners

Next, I use my 505 Spray to lightly coat the back of the punchneedle and then I fold in each of the four corners towards the back. (Can you see the sparkling thread even on the back?)

Step 3 – fold in the sides

Next, I fold in the four sides, making sure that the corner points are nice a sharp and that no weaver’s cloth shows from the font of the embroidery. Sometimes I add another little squirt of 505 to the corners if the sides won’t stay in place.

Step 4 – applique in place

Now you’re ready to applique your punchneedle embroidery to your desired fabric base. Look how nice mine looks on the base that I did my bobbin work experiments on. The WonderFil threads look just amazing!

To stitch in place, use a thread that matches the weaver’s cloth and a small running stitch around the edge of the embroidery piece.

This week I’ve shown you a couple of ways to use WonderFil threads to embellish your fabric projects. There are SO many neat techniques that you can use to do fabric embellishing and this book is so great at explaining many of them – I highly recommend it!

The book shows you how to do each kind of embellishment on a small sample and encourages you to bind each sample and make a workbook. Here are some of my embellished “pages” which show decorative stitching, Shiva Paintstiks, beading, couching and other techniques. Now that I have my bobbin work butterfly sample I’m going to finish it off and add it to my book. I’m also going to look through the book for more creative ways in which I can use my ever-growing thread collection.

Thanks for joining me this week and I’ve hoped that you’ve learned a little about bobbin work and punchneedle and how great WonderFil’s Razzle and Dazzle threads are for embellishing your quilted masterpieces!