This video is supported in part by Skillshare.
[Intro music]
Hello and welcome back to my channel!
My name’s Annika, and today I’m going to be reviewing something that a lot of you
have asked me to review… this so called magic embroidery pen.
Now it has been touted as a way to make embroidery easier, more accessible, faster, more exciting…
But I’m a little bit skeptical of whether it actually works, because I’ve been burned
before…
ARGGHH ALL OF THIS JUST CAME OUT EUGH!
So before you go out and buy one for yourself, let’s see if it… can do the thing.
So I ordered one, from the internet – this seems to be the same one that is being sold
everywhere, under sometimes different brand names, sometimes it’s called ‘WarmCrochet’
but there’s a lot of like, generic versions around.
Ok, so, this is the package that I received.
I’m gonna open it up here…
Ok good!
That’s a good start, we have instructions….
Oh, instructions that fall apart, but instructions none the less!
Don’t worry guys, it says that it IS a ‘quality product’!
Needle punching is.. easy to start and impossible to stop!
Am I going to be stuck doing this forever?
First we have to thread the main needle.
Ok so this one is the main needle…
I don’t wanna waste really nice embroidery thread on my first attempt, so..
I’m going to find a not so nice colour.
Ok so to thread this we will need the needle threader, and the punch needle.
So first we put the threader in through the punch needle itself…
Oh!
Pops out the top there..
Then we insert the thread slash yarn..
I’m going to use 6 strands here but I don’t know what weight of thread I’m supposed
to be using.. ok, then pull the threader back through…
Oh!
And there it goes… and then we use this again to pull it through the little eye of
the embroidery needle.
So that goes through the little hole in the needle, and then we pull it back through…and
is that it?
THAT’S IT!
That wasn’t too hard!
I’m surprised!
Now the real test… will it work?
So I’ve got some cotton fabric here, to try it out on – I’m just going to pop
that onto an embroidery hoop so that the fabric is nice and… tense?
Is that the right word?
Taut?
Ok, so my fabric is just a standard, cotton fabric, and it’s in the embroidery hoop,
nice and taut…
So now, apparently, we just punch this through… what happens to this little… this long bit
of thread?
Doesn’t say what we do with this little stringy bit but we will figure that out later,
lets see if it even does anything first.
I’m really excited!
Huh.
Nope.
Nope… still.. nope..
aww!
Well THAT didn’t work!
C’mon… [laughs]
Eugh, not again!
This is the handheld sewing machine all over again.
Why won’t you go in?
Go INTO the fabric!
IN!
Ok so I think the problem here is the needle is way too big for this fabric, and I’m
literally…
It’s just poking gigantic holes thought the fabric.. which, I mean, IS THERAPUTIC…
But it’s not what its supposed to be doing…
But for now I’m going to try this on a different fabric, I’m going to try this on denim.
Maybe it will work with that.
Alright leeets try this again…oh hang on!
It almost stayed in... [laughs]
C’monnnn C’MONNNNNN [weeps in frustration]
Ok this might help, there’s a little dial on the side, not sure what it does because
it’s literally just called, screw, in the instructions….
Let’s turn it up all the way to 11… ah it makes the needle longer, ok that might
help, let’s just make it as long as possible… then it might actually stay in the fabric?
I dunno, I’m totally guessing here…
OKAY!
[gasps]
OHHHH!
It’s staying the fabric!!!
YUSS I guess I’ll just do a straight line here…boop
de doop ba boop…
I guess I’m doing a little S?
Ok, we’ve made an S. Oh no!
Oh NO!
What?
So… ok…
yeah this is my concern with this…
The thread came out WAY too easily, there’s nothing to anchor it to the back, of the piece
of fabric so...
I’m not entirely sure how that’s supposed to work.
And it says you can apply it to pretty much anything, any kind of cloth… look at the
examples they’ve given, I mean, there’s a warning sign right there…like if THAT
is the best examples they can give?
Ok so this kit came with three different size needles, this is the one that was originally
in it, which is GIGANTIC compared to this smaller one.
So if I put the little small one…
hopefully, it might work better?
I’ve been filming for… 42 minutes.
Ok, lets see if this works.
[mumbles of frustration] Oh man, now it’s just not holding… why
aren’t you holding in?
Now it just doesn’t want to stay in the fabric!
What happened?
What happened to make you not want to stay in the fabric, thread?
It’s like, chasing me around…
WHAT’S YA DEAL?!
WHY?
I don’t understand!
… I’m done.
[Door slams]
Ok instructions, I’ve lost all faith in
you, I am turning to YouTube, to see if anyone else has figured these things out…
[typing noise]
How. To.
Use.
An.
Embroidery.
pen.
[YouTube clip music starts]
Well, well, well, well.
Hello.
I am back.
And boy, have I learned a LOT.
First, let’s talk about what this thing is NOT.
It’s not a revolutionary new tool.
It’s not a magic embroidery pen.
It’s not even supposed to be used for the type of embroidery that it’s largely been
marketed for.
Nope, this tool is more accurately called a Punch Needle, and it is used for a very
specific craft called Punch Needle Embroidery.
Yet, it has been completely mis-marketed as something else.
So – firstly, what is Punch Needle Embroidery?
Well, it is a different thing to standard hand embroidery, the type that’s just done
with needle and thread, the type that you would have seen me do on my channel many times
before.
And Punch Needle Embroidery is a legit craft.
In fact, it is a very old-school craft, like its been around for hundreds, if not thousands
of years.
What is does is it creates these three-dimensional, rug-like textures, made up of lots of tiny
little loops, either using yarn or thick embroidery floss.
And the fabric used for it needs to be a very specific type of fabric, called “Weaver’s
Cloth”, which is very closely woven, and is pulled very TAUT over something like a
frame or hoop, and when the fabric is taken off the thing that’s stretching it out,
the weave of the fabric kinda springs back and holds all of the threads tightly in place.
So that’s why there’s no need to tie any knots or loops to fix the threads in place,
because they do if you use the right fabric, stay in there.
So the instructions that came with this pen, saying that it can be used on “any kind
of cloth” – well, it actually says ‘can be applied to almost of clothing’ … I
assume that means they’re saying apply it to any kind of fabric… well, that’s just
plain wrong.
So this type of embroidery can’t really be used on things like clothes, or bags…
anything that’s really going to have a lot of wear and tear or need washing.
It’s mainly used for decorative wall hangings, or pretty display pillows, or it’s used
in larger sizes with bigger, but similar tools to make things like rugs.
So, after I’d done a BUNCH of research and learned what this pen is ACTUALLY for – I
gave Punch Needle Embroidery a go, which requires a whole new set of skills!
So I thought that I would punch needle a little house.
Simple shapes, a couple of different colours – let’s see how it turns out!
So I tried to use a fabric that is closer to weaver’s cloth – I didn’t have any
of the specific fabric but I used a non-stretchy denim this time, with quite a close weave,
and I also used the thinnest needle and it seemed to hold the stitches in ooookay.
And to do actual Punch Needle embroidery, I threaded the pen like I did before, but
the side that we’re going to be punching into here, is actually going to be the BACK
side of the project.
The other side is going to be the nice side, the side that goes on display, and that’s
the side where the thread becomes all LOOPY.
Those loops are something we actually want, and we can, apparently, adjust the length
of the loops by moving this dial on the side of the pen up and down.
And to create those loops, you punch through the back-side like this, making each new “punch”
just next to the last one, and what I saw on other tutorials was that people generally
would outline their shape first, and then fill it in by working their way inwards either
in spirals or in rows, until they’d filled up the whole shape.
And a good thing that I have to say about punch-needles – well, they are faster than
standard hand embroidery, even if the results are nowhere close to being the same thing.
So, I wanted to try a couple of different colours of thread on this house… doop de
doop do doo, just giving it a front path as well… for some reason I decided to make
the loops super long on the path and it made the path really look like… spaghetti.
Yeah.
So, the general idea is that you leave all the threads loose at the back – you don’t
need to knot or tie them at all because the fabric weave should hold it all in place.
And then, the front side should look something like this.
But like… better than this because this… doesn’t look so great.
But hey – it was my first attempt, alright?!
And I mean, you can at least tell it’s a house – right?
Luci: It’s…ah… clearly a… is it a person with a hat?
Luci: Give me some clue?
Annika: [laughs] Luci: Is this a person’s face and just some
kind of little… hat?
And that’s their eye and their ear?
Annika: Don’t you like it?
It’s an artwork I made for the house!
Luci: Its… really… great!
Annika: Ok don’t look at that side…
Luci: Yup, it’s a good… ahh… it’s a house.
IT’S A HOUSE!
Luci: It’s a window and a door and a roof and a chimney and a path?
It’s a house.
Luci: It’s…
damn good.
Annika: Let’s hang it up on the wall!
Luci: Ahhh… [laughs] let’s put it… let’s put it somewhere where people will see it,
you know, on a more circumstantial basis.
Annika: Aww!
Luci: Like we could put it in… this cupboard!
Luci: And it could be like when people open the cupboard…
Annika: [laughs] Luci: Oh, the artwork on the wall, everyone
sees that!
But then they open the cupboard and WOW!
So yeah.
Punch needles are a thing.
Punch Needle embroidery, is a thing.
This punch needle isn’t a very good one though, because… well, the plastic bit that
holds the needle in place broke after one use, and then I had to use duct tape to hold
the needle in place… and, they also really slice through the fabric.
I was trying to make a steven universe punch needle thing… yeah.
The fabric just got totally sliced up.
It could have been the fact that I wasn’t using proper weaver’s cloth Buuuuutt I also
saw on other websites that cheap punch needles will do this to fabric.
Okay, so, while I might not be very good at it, yet, and while this one may be a very
cheap version of it – Punch Needles ARE a legit thing… but the biggest problem that
I have with this thing – is that this is NOT how it’s been marketed.
Instead of being marketed as a… not very good Punch Needle, it’s being marketed as
“a magic embroidery pen”; which as I said in the beginning is being sold as an easy
way to do standard embroidery stitches, but with like, way less effort when that isn’t
the case… at ALL.
So, there is some very shady, dishonest marketing going on here.
Why?
…How did this happen?!
So I kinda imagined that it happened something like this.
So there is this guy, let’s call him Dennis.
So Dennis works at this craft warehouse and he’s… not so good at his job.
And one day, instead of placing an order for 100 punch needles, he accidentally places
an order for 10,000.
So after a while, he realised he made a mistake but instead of owning up he pretends that
he didn’t make a mistake at all!
So then, like 3 months later, 10,000 punch needles show up and he FREAKS OUT and he’s
like, Dennis: OMG the boss is going to KILL me!
So Dennis’ much more competent co-worker, Penelope, comes in to save the day and she’s
like, Penelope: omg Dennis, I can’t leave you
alone for 10 minutes, the company is ruined.
But then she’s like…
Penelope: Luckily you have me, I am going to save the company and I’m going to pull
the greatest marketing scam ever.
So you know what’s been really trendy lately?
Embroidery!
So let’s say that these punch needles, which are for punch needling, are actually for regular
embroidery, and that it makes it easier and faster!
Because you know, millennials, they love their crafts, they love their DIY, but they ALSO
love getting things done quickly so let’s tell them this is a way to do embroidery faster.
And so then Penelope and Dennis hatch this scheme to rebrand the punch needles as “MAGIC
EMBROIDERY PENS”, throw up some real dodgy YouTube tutorials and videos of how it works
and show a piece at the end that’s most definitely been stolen from an artist who
has hand-stitched the piece – and BOOM, thousands of people put down money for these…
and thousands of people are left very disappointed and confused when this god damn pen doesn’t
do the thing they thought it was supposed to do.
Dennis.
This is all your fault.
So during my research I did find a kind of tool that might work slightly like how this
was supposed to work – you might want to look into getting a high quality Kantan needle?
(not sure how to pronounce that!)
This is how it’s spelt – or a Tambour hook – you can use these tools to do like,
just basic stitches or the Tambour hook I think does chain stitches and you can do the
stitches pretty quickly.
But, keep in mind that you still can’t achieve as many hand stitches as you can with just
standard hand embroidery.
But this piece of plastic junk?
I don’t think I will even attempt to try and use this again, because it’s been SO
poorly made.
But if you do like the look of punch needle embroidery, in my research I also found some
good ones of those.
This blog here, Theoldtatteredflag, had some recommendations with the ‘ultra’ or ‘cameo’
needle, CTR punch needles or the Iglochy Russian punch needle.
And it also took me a long time to find proper instructions on how to use them because the
internet has been flooded by people being confused with how these things work.
But I did find a website that I think does show you how to use it properly, which you
can find the instructions for here; which I will also link and all this stuff in the
description box below.
But, a magic, super quick embroidery pen?
Sadly, that is not really a thing.
If you do want to learn how to do things properly, first time around – then a resource that’s
worth checking out is the sponsor of today’s video, which is Skillshare.
Skillshare is an online learning community that has thousands of classes in things like
design, illustration, animation, art, crochet, film production, music production, photography,
running your own business, technology, running social media accounts for a business – and
so much more.
A site like Skillshare is SUPER useful for someone me who works from home, because, running
my own creative business I kinda have to be… a Jack-of-all-trades.
And I didn’t just wake up one day KNOWING all this stuff – I have had to teach myself
all of this over years.
And how do I do that?
Well, largely by finding quality resources online.
For example, Skillshare has a bunch of graphic design videos; that’s something I’ve had
to teach myself recently.
For example, the new banner on my YouTube website… no one’s even mentioned it yet,
do you like it?
But I needed some graphic design skills to be able to put that together, so a website
like Skillshare is SUPER useful for learning how to do things like that.
And what I think is super awesome about Skillshare is that it’s not that expensive – a premium
membership is just under $10 a month – which in most countries, is a thousand times less
expensive than going to college, or technical college or uni…and there’s totally some
free classes too!
And I just think it’s really cool that Skillshare has tried to make their platform as accessible
as possible to the greatest number of people as possible.
Because learning things and being educated and having these skills, well – its a really
empowering thing!
It gives you the skills and tools to unlock new opportunities, and do the kind of work
that you want to do!
So, I’m super excited about is, because Skillshare is sponsoring today’s video,
they have given me a code, so that the first 500 people who use the code (it’s the top
line of the description box down below), the first 500 people who use this will get TWO
MONTHS of the Premium membership, so that gives you access to all the videos, for free,
so you can try it out, totally risk-free, and you can cancel at any time.
So you should go check it out!
Thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video and thank you to all of you for supporting
the companies that support this channel.
So just as a very last thing, you might be like…
Annika – you hate waste, you talk about it all the time, what’s going to become
of this punch needle?
Well, unfortunately this punch needle is going to go the same way as the hand held sewing
machine.
In that it’s going to sit forever on this shelf here, making me feel guilty, and no
I’m not going to take either of these to a thrift shop, because I don’t want to burden
someone else with this USELESS PIECE OF PLASTIC.
It doesn’t work.
At the very least, I hope that putting this video out to, you know, hundreds of thousands
of people, it’ll stop more people from buying them.
Anyway, that’s it from me; turned into a pretty ranty video there, but, sometimes you
just gotta have a good old rant!
So I hope you call enjoyed…
listening to it? – and I’ll see you all in my next video.
Bye!
Thank you to all of my supporters on Patreon and Ko-fi for making this video possible.
To support these videos so I can keep making them, go to ko-fi.com/annikavictoria to make
a one off donation, or to support me on an conntinual basis, go to patreon.com/annikavictoria