lmanna

I am in the planning stages of making a baby quilt for a coworker. I would love to include a small-ish needlepunched embroidery elephant for a textural element on the quilt but am wondering if that makes sense considering a baby quilt will likely get washed often. I don't have any experience with washing stuff made with embroidery floss.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Tartan

The needle punch I have done punches loops through the canvas to form the fuzzy picture however there is nothing to hold the loops in the back except being tightly packed. I would worry that the baby could pull or chew a string loose and choke.

Gay

I wouldn't use needlepunch for anything that will have to be washed regularly, it will fall apart too easily.

lmanna

Thanks, everyone - hadn't even considered potential danger to the baby. I will likely make a separate embroidery wall hanging to match the quilt. Back to the design board :-)

Cari-in-Oly

I did Russian punch embroidery back in the 70s when it first became popular here. Back then we used small brass handled needles not the plastic handled needles you see today. Anyway, I still have some of the designs I put on a few pairs of my pants. The pants themselves are long gone but before they went to the trash I cut out the embroidered parts. If you do the embroidery on a tightly woven fabric and then iron a piece of light weight stabilizer over the back of it the stitches will be secure.

Cari

romanojg

I love making rag quilts so on the part that isn't ragged I use fleece and do appliques on the blocks for color and texture.