First Needlepunch Experiment

I bought one of those new needlepunch attachments for my Bernina a couple of weeks ago. Just got around to trying it out last night. I can see a lot of possibilities for this tool.

In case you don't know what it is - it's a foot that goes on the sewing machine that has five barbed needles. You don't use thread and you have to take out the bobbin and bobbin race to make room for all those needles to go down through the needle plate. It basically causes your roving/wool/embellishments to bond with the base material by intermingling the fibers. So I used a piece of black wool as my background, some roving and fancy yarns and laid them out to make a flower. It was easier than I thought. Although when I decided to try it with a piece of Timtex behind the wool I nearly immediately broke a needle. Darn. One thing I did figure out pretty quickly is to tack the yarns in place before you starting running back and forth to punch them down. It's hard to keep a shape unless you do that. Also figured out that I have to buy a stiletto tool to guide the woolies so I don't punch five barbs through my fingers!

In case you're wondering why I'm not posting much - we're doing some house renovations and it's not leaving a lot of time to play right now.