Started punch needle in January and I still cannot get even loops. I flip the hoop over and the back is a mess of long floppy loops at wildly different lengths, more shaggy than carpet.
Every guide I find is about loops pulling out, which is not my problem. Adjustable needle, monk's cloth, worsted yarn. What am I doing that makes them long rather than short?
Start with the needle, because an adjustable one is the only part of this that sets loop length directly. A longer setting makes bigger loops, and plenty of people never touch it after unboxing. Shorten it, test on scrap, and find out whether that was the whole problem before changing anything about your technique.
The other half of your description, wildly different lengths rather than uniformly long, is a technique thing and it has two usual causes.
What are the two? I assume one of them is me.
Lifting the needle between punches, which pulls extra yarn through. The tip should drag along the surface to the next spot: punch, glide, punch, not punch, lift, punch. And not pushing all the way down every time, so some loops are full length and others are not. All the way to the stop, every punch.
Also match the yarn to the needle size. Too thin for the needle moves around and makes long uneven loops.
For the piece you already have, you are not stuck with it. Trim the loops: cutting them gives you a plush velvety pile and plenty of us do it deliberately rather than as a rescue.
Otherwise you can gently pull from the flat side to shorten an individual loop, carefully, because too much pull takes it out altogether. A genuinely messy patch is faster to re-punch than to repair.
@drum_tight · 2w ago
Check the fabric tension too. Punch needle wants drum tight, and monk's cloth that has relaxed in the hoop lets loops slip and shift, which reads as uneven length.
And look at the yarn feed. It should flow into the needle freely, so pull a generous slack length off the ball and make sure it is not catching. Any tug on the yarn and the needle drags loops back and forth as you work.
Reply
Report