Best Beginner Punch Needle Kits

For my first trick, I will rank the small number of punch needle kits I have completed and then assert that one is better than all the others, including the kits I haven’t tried and don’t even know about.

In order to really monetize my hobby and hopefully avoid crushing tax debt, I have signed up for the Amazon Affiliate program, so if you click on any of these links I’ll get a sweet, sweet, likely pitiful commission. But if by a stroke of luck I start raking in the cash I’ll be sure to update my post to express the appropriate amount of gratitude to our corporate oligarchs.

I used a very scientific method to make my determination and I will make up the metrics as I write. I signed up for the Adults and Crafts monthly craft boxes and they got me hooked on punch needling. My grandma taught me how to crochet when I was little and I always felt a loyalty to the hook, and for some reason it felt like I could only like one type of yarn craft. I also run out of attention span mid-beginning of all my crochet projects. I’m great at purchasing yarn for a project and then shoving it in a cube or plastic tote.

Punch needling is great because its quick, projects take just enough time to get into a flow state and escape reality for a bit, but not so long that it feels like there is no end in sight and I lose interest. The finished products can be used for stupid every day crap like stool covers, pillow cases and coasters or just left in the embroidery frame and hung as wall art.

The Ultimate BEST ever Punch Needle Kit for Beginners

The BEST punch needle kit: Punch Needle Kits Adults Beginner, Embroidery kit for Beginners, Punch Needle kit for Beginners, Includes All Tools and Materials, Easy to Follow Instructions and Videos (Spring is in Full Bloom) by MOREJMTT

You can find the kit on amazon here: https://amzn.to/45YVwRn

This kit came with everything you need INCLUDING a pre printed fabric sheet to practice the stitches on. That was super useful because, while I had done about 6 punch needle kits by the time I got this one I had never practiced the stiches this kit was asking me to do.

This has officially been my favorite punch needle kit to date. A few months ago I got one in a monthly subscription box and was hooked. As a lifelong crochet-er I have a ton of scrap yarn lying around and just loved the idea of having a use for it. This is probably my 6th punch needle kit and I have learned more from this kit than I have from the 6 previous ones combined. I learned so many new stitches and techniques as well as how to felt needle, which I never thought I would have enjoyed but I was wrong!

This kit has two pre-printed images, two embroidery hoops, all the yarn and tools you need plus an extra pre-printed fabric to practice the stitches. Unlike past projects, the images on this are the exact right size for the level of detail needed. And the images themselves have a vintage, classic feel. My boyfriend remembers his grandmother having similar ones hanging in her house when he was a kid. The tools all come in a little plastic box so it was really easy to keep track of them. The craft scissors have a fine pointed curved tip, which was especially great for the cut pile stitches, but if you plan on doing more projects like this I’d recommend getting a dedicated pair of really nice scissors. I actually used a pair of chikamasas leftover from my trimming days lol they were perfect.

The video tutorial also showed little how to adjust the needle length with a pipe cleaner and use a cord to make a needle threader. It felt like the kind of tips you usually have to learn from a friend that has been doing it for years. I did have some issues with the pipe cleaner snagging on the yarn so I had to rewrap in two layers so it started from the handle, went down to the required length, and then wrapped back up to the handle so the exposed metal wasn’t near the yarn.

I started by putting the practice sheet on one hoop and the first image on the other so I could practice each new stitch before I needed to do it. I saved the youtube tutorial on my phone so I could reference it each time I finished a step. It comes with a reference page that shows the colors and what types of stitches go where, but it doesn’t tell you which order to do it in, which is important for certain parts of the images.

I do wish there was a written step by step guide for reference because it was a little annoying having to go back to the video each time, but being forced to watch the video to learn the stitches was probably a good thing for me since my ADHD brain puts the cart before the horse sometimes.

I could probably go on because I had so many, “I never would have thought of that, I love this kit!” moments, but I’ll spare you and just reiterate that this is a great kit for beginners who might feel intimidated by some of the fancier stitches like I did.

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This Kit Gave Me Hell

But Turned Out Cool

Purchase it Here: https://amzn.to/3Vz760t

This kit really gave me a hard time and I almost gave up. I had to have googled every variation of “punch needle fabric won’t hold stitch” I could think of: stitch won’t stay in punch needle, punch needle stitch keeps falling out, help me god this punch needle kit is driving me crazy. I checked the reviews and saw people saying things like, “I’m a beginner and this kit was amazing” with a picture of their half finished work. So I knew there had to be a way to make this work. Afterall, 7 punch needle works in I was basically an effort.

The common causes of stitches not staying are:

• Tension, are you sitting on your yarn like an idiot so that you are pulling the stitches back out? The yarn needs to be loose enough to flow freely through the needle.
• Is there barbed metal inside your punch needle? This wasn’t listen on ANY of the blogs I looked at, but it was the issue I ran into with the needle that came with his kit. The yarn was snagging on the inside of the needle and so it wasn’t moving through the tube easy. But swapping out punch needles alone did not solve my issue
• Is your fabric pulled taught in the frame? My issue with pre-stapled frames is that they get looser as your work and this can make it harder and more frustrating to punch through the fabric. I thought maybe this was stapled too loose and I was about to rip it off the frame and buy an expense scroll frame but luckily I Was able to figure it out
• Is your yarn to slippery to stay in the fabric? After switching needles I started trying out different yarns I had in the house. I found a brown yarn that was thinner and not as smooth as the yarn that came with the kit. Finally! After I got started the thread that came with the kit stayed in better. My guess is that once I was able to pack in some yarn it helped the other sections hold onto the stitches a little tighter.

I ended up going a little rogue and used some cut pile stitches with a mix of light and dark brown yarns hoping to go for a sort of fall look. I also swapped out the brown dirt piles for a grey that looked a little more like rocks and used some glow in the dark eyelash yarn for one of the trees. For the felt trees I used the thread to put some initial stitches down right where the brown yarn for the trunk would go just to hold it in place and then actually used a combination of stitches and my felting needles to hold them in place.

The instructions were okay, but the Spring in Bloom one set the bar really high with the instructional video. Overall thought, I enjoyed it.

When I was browsing etsy I noticed someone had finished this kit and was trying to sell it for over $200 which is WILD to me but if people are willing to shell it out then who am I to judge? That said, I’m accepting offer on this non-original, one of a kind but also one of many amateurpiece.

This kit was everything that is wrong with pre-stapled frames but I liked it anyways

BEUNITONE 4 Sets DIY Punch Needle Kits for Beginners,Floral Flower Pre-Printed Pattern,Embroidery Punch Needle Starter Kits for Adults,Includes Pre-Printed Cloth,Yarns,Hoops,Threader and Instructions

You can purchase it here: https://amzn.to/4652vs5

This was one of my early punch needle projects so I struggled a bit with it. The instructions were really basic, basically just said to fill in the design. Had I been a little more experienced, or did the one by MOREJMTT first I might have been able to pull off something a little fancier than I did.

If you grab this kit, I recommend looking into how to do the different types of stitches for the flower petals, I lost of a lot of detail not knowing what I was doing. I don’t even think its worth framing these, maybe the local thrift shop can find them a home.

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Non pictured are the several Mondo Llama punch needle kits from target that I never finished because they sucked. I did one picture frame from them that turned out okay. And then I got a coaster kit because it was small and I thought it would be nice to carry around, but I had similar issues with not being able to get the fabric to hold the yarn stiches.

Let me know how much my reviews suck in the dcomments!