Punch needle: what it is and how to get started in this relaxing embroidery technique

Could it be that between shoots and shoots, actresses like Julia Roberts or Sarah Jessica Parker take out their tools of punch needle and review their lines? I’m not sure, but that’s what I imagined after reading an article in the vanguard , where they commented that these actresses, along with Amanda Seyfried and Russell Crowe, are some of the stars who practice this technique of weaving embossed designs on fabric. Although it sounds complex, in practice it is not: it all depends on the magic needle and how you use it.

If you type “punch needle“In the Google and Pinterest search engines, you will notice the endless number of projects and ideas that are unleashed from this concept. Most of the fans share their beautiful creations on the networks, such as cushions, handbags , rugs, jackets or paintings.

Soledad Navarro, graphic designer and founder of ESEtextile space to develop embroidery with a magic yarn needle and experiment with textile techniques, says he discovered the punch needle it’s been five years.

“It was on social media: I saw a Canadian named Arounna Khounnoraj (@bookhou on Instagram), which she embroidered with a beautiful wooden needle and thick threads. It looked like a lot of fun and not that difficult, so I started figuring it out,” he says.

The more she saw the projects, the more she wanted to learn and create her own creations. “I read everything I found and watched all the tutorials available, in all languages. I chatted on social media with many girls from the United States, who kindly explained to me a lot of things,” she explains. That’s how he ended up talking to Amy Oxford, owner of the Oxford Punch Needle, “the best needles for embroidering with wool in this beautiful technique,” he says.

She practiced every day for six months, until a craft store posted one of her works on their networks and people started asking her if she was teaching this technique. “Months later I was encouraged to give workshops and then I started importing Oxford Punch Needles,” says Navarro, becoming the only official representative of them in South America.

globally known as punch needle, but here in Chile it is also called Chinese embroidery, pica pica needle, plush, choapinera or magic needle. But whatever it is called, it is an embroidery technique that, as its name suggests in English, is done almost by hitting the needle against the frame. To practice it, it is necessary to use a special needle, the one that pierces the piece of fabric, leaving a small loop of wool called a loop.

“When this is repeated in an orderly and precise manner, the result is a looped surface similar in appearance to the texture of a tapestry,” says Soledad Navarro. “Curls can be short, long and cropped, and depending on this, designs with three-dimensional effects can be formed. You can also embroider in the opposite direction and have a flat effect,” he explains.

Believe it or not, this form of embroidery is not complicated to learn. “In itself, it is a technique of repetition, where one is like a human sewing machine, inserting the needle into the fabric always in the same way. But for the technique to work, several considerations must be applied,” says Navarro.

For example, there are different needle sizes for different fabrics and yarns. “There are magic needles for embroidery thread, extra fine threads, other fine threads and also coarse ones,” he comments. One of the benefits, he says, is that progress is much faster than in traditional embroidery, so it’s possible to complete a project in less time and without too much risk of boredom.

In the space ESEtextile , Soledad Navarro gives four different workshops, basic and advanced. In March, for example, create a club of punch needle in Providencia, “for all those who already know but who need a guide”, he invites.

It sounds easy and it looks like fun, but before you start embroidering anything that pops into your head, you need to equip yourself with some basic supplies.

According to what Navarro explains, these are:

• a magic needle
• Yarn depending on the thickness of your needle (like burlap, osnaburgo or crea)
• a good frame

The latter is essential, since it must “affirm and maintain the fabric taut”. It can be round, square, plastic or wooden; everything will depend on how you want to give your design. “Since no knots are made in this technique, it is important that the fabric has a lot of tension, that it stays taut like a drum,” he explains.

To start embroidering with punch needle, Soledad Navarro explains that you have to hold the needle like a pencil, starting from the middle of the handle, always leaving the groove up. “The magic needle must penetrate the fabric completely, all the way to the end of the needle’s length, and only then pull it up. This is essential for achieving an even appearance,” he elaborates.

Once you have removed the needle to advance, you must do so by “sliding the tip forward with the needle groove forward” and then sliding the needle through the fabric and moving on to the next point.

If you repeat the process described above over and over again, you will find that your embroidery will form as you stitch. EITHER punch-adasAlright.

Little by little, the punch needle It has colonized workshops and spaces. The ease of the technique, the versatility it allows and its simplicity to take anywhere, promote people’s creativity, as well as relaxation and mental health.

This is how, for example, this craft was introduced as a therapy for hospital patients, people in prison or children in kindergartens: when embroidering, we use and encourage the areas of our brain linked motor, sensory and visual sensitivity.

In fact, a study conducted by Harvard Medical School found that these manual techniques reduce heart rate by an average of 11 beats per minute and induce an “enhanced state of calm”. It’s something like describe psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, creator of the flow theory: “When you know what you need to do is achievable, the sense of time disappears, you forget yourself and feel part of something much bigger.” This, so beneficial but which with the quantity of current stimuli is so difficult to achieve, is not so complicated to achieve with the punch needle.

When practicing it, you need to focus and concentrate, in addition to promoting psychomotor skills. For this reason, in many colleges or Montessori schools, punch needle It is a technique that children learn before they even read. And when you get older, it’s a good way to keep this part of the body active, preventing diseases like arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome. Research from the Mayo Clinic in a group of people over the age of 70 showed that knitters were “less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment and memory loss”.

In addition to a sense of belonging, you can improve self-esteem by mastering a new skill. And once you have learned the basics, a thirst for knowledge will surely awaken in you, as happened to Soledad Navarro, and thus find new opportunities to be creative or other spaces to distract you and silence mental or outside noises that keep you from relaxing.

*The prices of the products in this article are updated as of February 17, 2023. The values ​​and their availability may change