Birdie - Punch Needle Sculpting and Embroidery

1. Introduction: Hey guys, Today we're gonna learn how to make this cutie. Are you ready? Let's go. 2. Supplies: For this project, you will need linen fabric or any other punching or fabric of your choosing. I've used a nine inch Morgan no-slip hoop, so I used about 13 by 13 inches squared for this, a nine inch embroidery hoop, tapestry needle, paper scissors to cut your design. Really great sharp scissors to sculpt and your yarn. Lots of yarn. And of course, punch needle. Let's get started. 3. Punching and Sculpting: So the first thing we have to do is transfer our design onto your fabric. So we're going to stretch your fabric into the hoop. This is the no slip hook. That is the best for punching because it keeps the fabric really stretched the whole time. Regular embroidery hoop pulled, not do that for you. I highly recommend this guy. What I do is I put the fabric and then just work my way around until it is really tight. I go around and then tighten a little bit and then go around some more to see if anything excuse me, needs to tightening. This is actually pretty good. So just want to make sure that this is all synoptic inward supposed to be. We tightened. We're gonna be working from both sides of the hoop or sculpting part will be on this side, which means we will have to punch attack, which is how punching is usually done. We do is we're gonna transfer, we're only going to transfer the bird. Because the flowers will be embroidered. Flowers will actually be transferred from the front. I can set that aside. Grab our punch authority for sculpting. You want to have a really high pile on the other side. I'm going to go to the very last settings. So I have my longest tip. And I'm just going to thread the needle. Just like so. And then you can work with whatever needle you have. Just make sure it's on the lawn of the setting. We're gonna start with the wing. We're going to sculpt it first and then we're going to go to the rest of the bird. So when you're punching for sculpting, you want to clench really close together so you have a really dense area on the other side. About every second hole. If you're using a thicker yarn, you can adjust based on that. You will not need to crunch so closer together if you have bulky size yarn, for example, you can turn your work. However, it's most comfortable for you to punch. I have a tendency to rotate my hoop so that I am mainly going from right to left. But some people prefer to go from the bottom up or from top-down wherever it feels comfortable, just make sure that you are opening of the needle is always in the direction where you're punching. And then if you need to switch it, you just turn your needle while it's inside and then punish like so. So when you're punching the basics are you want to go all the way down for sure, needle all the way down. And when you come up for air, you don't want to lift your needle too much because then you'll have a loop here. That happens. We'll just pull your needle and then reset. So it's the tip of the needle should be always flush with the fabric as you're punching. And you're moving forward. And you're basically sliding the tip of the needle on the fabric. Now we have this fluff here. What I usually like to do, a shape to fill out, I do an outline and then I continue in a circular motion. Pattern inwards. I do that until it's all filled. They're the smaller areas. Make sure you don't over punched. Really easy to put way too many stitches. And if you're just doing punch needle, it'll come out really warped. If you're punching for sculpting, you might be able to get away with that because we're going to be cutting everything on the other side. I'm just going to continue like this until the whole wing filled in. I also have my yarn here and I'm pulling from the center. So that way the whole scale is not dancing all over the table. And I can just pull from the center. It's easiest to do it that way. All right. So I'm just going to finish the wing and I'm gonna meet you when I'm done. All right, so now that we're done, we're going to flip our work over. Take our amazing scissors. These are Kai scissors assessed. I think the best scissors for scoping honestly. Okay, so we have this blob right now and we're going to sculpt it. So if you're not sure what the shape is like, you can squish the yarn a little bit to see where we are. You can flip it over to C. I see this is where the flatter side of the wing is and this is more of a weekly side here. So what I like to do is take my scissors and just do a slightly angled cut at first just to get those loops that are at the, on the edge. This out of the way. And you don't have to worry right now about getting my squiggly squiggly side. Perfect. We're gonna get to that later. I also like to have a small vacuum with me when I sculpt as well as a face mask because I don't like to breathe all this acrylic. This is the first round of cut. This is what it'll look like. It'll have sort of like just scruffy loops around. So I'm going to make another cut and I'm just gonna go closer to the basis. I'm going to go perpendicular. The shape. You want to go too close. Because then you might sniff the fabric, which is the worst-case scenario. You might snip the basis of the loop, in which case you can always replenish and a risk of the cancer and not to worry about that. Okay. This is okay for the first, we can clean that up later. Now we're going to, we have flatter sides here. And now we're gonna move up a little bit and ankle are scissors this way. We're only trimming the ends of the loops. You don't want to go too deep because you're going to lose the shape. So we're just going on the surface. You can use the edge of the scissors to sort of get the mess off the hoop. Though now we're getting a little bit more of that dome shape here. We're just going to continue moving the scissors upwards and angling them until we're flat on the top. So we were just about here. So we can actually go pretty flat right now. First do a cut so that your surface is somewhat even. Don't worry about loops that are staying on cut because you will always have those. How are we going to fix that? You can grab your scissors and just pick those loops, got through them, then trim them to the height of the rest of the loops around them. If you wanted to. Leave this looking a little bit variegated. So it's not just it all trimmed. You can actually leave some loops as they are. That way you will have some sort of a color variation because as you're noticing the yarn as we're cutting in, it's getting darker. But if you want a little bit of fluff like feathers wouldn't all be the same color, right? So you can leave some of the loops. It's actually pretty funny. Okay, So what I'm gonna do now, I'm going to go grab my vacuum and I'm going to vacuum. After you vacuum, you're gonna notice some of the streets that the vacuum pulled out, which is actually super helpful. So now I'm going to go around the shape. Perfect it here. This is the wiggly part. Now this is a straight part. This is the wiggly part. Okay. So I'm going to go straight around here in closer. You can see how the shape is much more defined now. This is where the wiggles come in. You can move the loops around just to see where you need to cut a little bit more. Sometimes I like to go like this. Right in-between the wiggle. It'll create that sort of wavy effect. I always like to push the loops and pile in the direction that I'm trying to cut so I can see what's still kind of hanging over that section because if you push it this way, Yes, this is great. But the second and someone touches it, it's going to become misshapen. So I'm going to give this a trim here. Now. Sort of go around to make it more wiggly. So here's Another 11. Too careful with the tip of your scissors so you don't cut your fabric. This is pretty good. I'm going to leave this as is, and I'm going to punch the rest of the body to see how the yarn around the wing will react with this. It'll probably push some of the pile up higher so we can adjust later on. I have my punch it on the same setting. I'm just going to grab a darker yarn. I'm going to punch the whole body in the same way. So we're punching about every second hole. Going all the way down. You don't have to worry about the beak, the eye, or the legs. We're gonna do those from the front actually. These regard as we punch. If at anytime you feel like you've punched incorrectly or pulled out too much or whatever, you can always pull out your loop and then adjust your yarn again until it is not loopy here, and then continue punching. So now we're done with the body snip. Last stitch. This is what we have. Here's our Birdie. So we're going to do the same thing that we did with the way we're gonna do a cut around first. You can push on your fabric from the bottom a little bit to raise your loops. Just don't do it too much because you might sleep too much. Now around here. I'm just going to snip a little bit too much of a dent aware, so to speak. Just with the chips. Now I'm gonna continue handling the scissors as I'm going upwards. It's time for some vacuum. You don't have to worry, your loops will not come out when you're vacuuming. It's okay. Now I want to push all these to the outer side so I can do another cat. I'm going to do ****. Got again. I'm going to go in a different direction here so I can access this little corner. Now I'm gonna go around again as I'm moving up and we're going to push on this alert of it to expose the tips. Now the loops. Again, if you want to leave it looking more texture, you can leave some loops on cotton. Okay, so now I'm going to worry about getting ellipse here before I worry about the whole shape. Now I see there's some loops here in the wing that are a bit too long. On snip. I'm going to go around by the wing and angling little bit. Just so I'm getting the ends of the body color. You can see how it's much better defined now. And I have a couple there that I can still just with the tips of my scissors really doing surface coming there. I'm going to continue around a little bit just to clean up these bad boys that are sticking out. It's helps to go in opposite direction of cutting because you're exposing loops that have been pushed this way with the scissors. See? This way. You can continue cleaning up because this shoe will be knowing when to stop. The baddie. I'm actually looking for most of the loops, but you don't have to. I think my shape looks pretty good. It can be a little scruffy because it's a bird. So do whatever you want. You're the artist. So this is what it is, it to be like? This is the body. We're going to have the legacy. Continue on the wing now. There's gonna be nothing around here in terms of yarns. So I really need to enlist up to whatever shape I wanted to. I don't know if I explained this in the beginning, but the reason we're angling the scissors is because we're going for that dome shaped body and weighing and just all of the shapes like that unless you, you know, you will have different shapes. Here. I'm also going to go a little bit down towards the tip so that I haven't done going Miss way. More of that cut here so that we can tell. We have that wiggly thing going much surface. Like I said, it's really hard to know it to stop. It's easier to less at a time and do more cuts than got too much at once and then regret it. I think I think because I won't know until I see the whole thing, but I think this is good. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to cut out the flowers and the sun and we're gonna transfer them onto here. And then go from there. 4. Embroidery: Okay, I've decided I'm gonna do the heifers and so I'm gonna go one sending down. I have this lovely indigo color here. You can use black, but I mean, we now have some fun. All right? So we're literally just making one loop here, which is going to be fun. We can approximately right there. And, and just do one group. Did on the other side. Snip here, leave a little barn hanging so it doesn't come through. And then I'm going to snip this here. And then what you can do to adjust the I can grab this and just pull on it a little bit until like how deep it is. Where you can also do is you can trim around. The area is a little bit lower. I sort of stands out, just don't cut into the eye. I mean, if you do, you can always be punch, not a big deal. Perfect. So now we can transfer herself. Put this underneath. Proximately. Don't make this too long because you're gonna have to go over it with the needle so it's hidden. These are approximate so we know which direction we're gonna go in and I'll tell you how to do it later. But just FYI, I I just realized that but the sun in the wrong side was supposed to be here. So now the flowers are also allowed to be here. Embroidery. Now, we don't have to have super long loops that because the loops will be on the other side, we won't see them. So you can go down to about this. You don't want to go also super low because your loops will not stay in and it will come out especially this only has like a couple a couple of stitches. So let's see where the beak is approximately. You can probably tell the sharpie and the others. Just going to mark it right there. I'm going to go in and pull end to the other side. Then I'm going to go left. Now this is going to be fine. Then I'm going to go right. Then I'm going to go into the center. So it may look a little training. Have a beak. There are my legs. 12. I'm gonna keep this. Actually what I'm gonna do go regular punch needle because if we did this one stitch, it'll be too loose. So I'm going to do regular punch TDL for one. And the same thing here. All right, let's work on these flowers down here next. So what I'm going to do, threaded, we need all with the brighter yellow color. I'm just going to go I'm just going to punch the centers. You're setting doesn't have to be super long for this bit longer than I shouldn't have. Let me go on down. Just so we don't waste yarn because really all you're doing is wasting yarn, but it's on the other side and you won't be able to see it. All right, now that we're done with the centers, we can do the petals. So the petals we're going to do again embroidery. You can do them as loops if you want to be. I'm just gonna go and punch in the center. Pull the ends to the other side, and then readjust a little bit. And so now we're just going to do straight stitches. Basically. We're going to go and then I like to turn my needle and then go back to the center and sort of follow each petal shape. Like so. I'm gonna go to the next one. We just want to make sure your overlap the markers so it's not visible. The I missed it here, so I'm going to pull it out and I'm gonna redo it. You can rearrange your fabric for it and just keep following the shape purposes. The other side, all you have are these random loops right at the beginning. You want to have super defined at all. If you're doing this technique, if you want to have super defined petals and it will either need to scope them or punch them. You can also do like a, like a regular embroidery around to make them more defined. But I like this, how the flower is sort of imperfect. So cute. I love how textured it gets. Just fluffy and you're punching too much in one spot and get a little too much. Sometimes you can punch sort of close to it, but not quite. Now, here I'm going to pause a bit of the yarn out from the needle so we have a longer tail. Look at this, not q. The door of all. Here's the green. I'm going to continue the same in the same fashion. Keeping the embroidery the same, but the colors will be there. Okay, The flowers are done. Now we're going to move on to the sun. That right? Okay, So what I'm gonna do, I'm going to make this a little bit stronger because I want to bunch of this from the other side are permitted to do that. I need to see that help kinase. I'm just going to set my needle to one of the shorter settings. I'm going to have four of the ridges sticking out. The best ways to explain this. When you have a shorter setting on, you really have to make shorter stitches because your loops on the other side will not be super long. So just want to make sure that you're. In how many gaps there? The shorter the tip of the needle, the shorter your stitches. So these shouldn't be too long right away for holes every other older than most other hole. Just going to go and punch this in a circular motion just like I did the bird. And then luck to you. I have a little space here, but I'm gonna check the other side. I don't need to punch them. It'll be overdominance. I do. My stitch here. That's cute. I like. We're gonna have a variation of things. So now we're gonna do the raise. Was debating what the best way to do this would be so that I would actually like it and it would be easier to punch. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna make an outline around the sun and then go and make a tray. I'm gonna punch to the base of the ray. Then I'm gonna go and punch the ray. Make sure your yarn is really following easily for this. And then I'm going to turn my needle while it's inside and it turned back. Then I'm going to make a small stitch. So the sun will have sort of an outline. I'm not punching into the same hole for every sunrise or a couple of sunrise. And I'm going to go back. I'm gonna make a stitch to the next rain. The length of these, you can do whatever you want, pretty much emit them shorter. I didn't want to go too close to the bird, but if you want to go longer here, just make sure your loops won't come out. When we do that. I'm going to make a stitch to the next one. You can go longer unless bit back stitch to the next one. Just continue to hear because it was a little further apart. And you can you don't have to follow this exactly you can do on in-between if you want. I'm going to make this one a little longer. Come back to see how with how much I can get away with. Make a couple here. And then my cat is here and finished with one more stitch there. Below bit more yarn. 5. Finishing: Okay, so now I'm going to show you how to transfer finished piece into a hoop and how to display it. So we're just going to take this out. Leave us for the next project. Okay, so here's my 19 tube. I grabbed the rough size before align and make sure that it is somewhat. This doesn't have to be stretched. Like when you're punching, just needs to fit within the hoop. Needs to look sort of stretched, but it doesn't have to be stretched to the max. As long as it's. Now what we're going to do. We need a tapestry needle and just go random piece of yarn. This is about coffee yard. We're going to finish of this. So I'm gonna cut all these corners. So they're gonna have about two inches, inch and a half. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just don't have too much fabric then because it's going to be sticking out. Grab my needle. It doesn't matter where you start. But while leave an end here. There's fiber everywhere. And we're just going to, What is this? And we're just going to go around with these. It actually helps to do more of a neutral color. I don't think it's gonna be visible from the other side, but it might. So I'm actually going to swap the color. Sometimes I get so much into the zone that I don't really think about the outcome. I just really going to float because it's fun and I'm doing it. So carbon neutral color, a white or cream. We've used white here. So I have, if you've used white, then I can use that. This is easier to do it Andy. Just in and out, in and out. And you don't have to be it doesn't have to be even it doesn't have to be exactly the same distance from levodopa reworks high just to make sure you don't go too close to the edge because the fabric will come apart. I keep forgetting the word for that. One is a cough. I don't know. But you know what I mean? Just continue around. If it starts pulling like this, that's fine. That's what we're gonna do anyway. So just keep going until you meet other way. Then you're gonna take off your needle. You're going to do is you're going to tie these two and then pull, pull, pull. I've pulled your fabric together. I liked tie, bow. If I decide to change something or whatnot. But look how cute. You can hang on your wall. You can cut off more of the fabric if you'd like. You can put felt in here and sort of secure that way if you want. You can cut a piece of cardboard and circle that size and push it into what holds everything in. You can use one of these fancy hoops. I don't have the right size for this, but this is a really cute way to display it. We're done.