A Little Punchy

While I don't normally go for pre-packaged needlework kits from craft stores (I'm skeptical about thread quality in these things, and if you're going to invest hours upon hours on an embroidery project, higher quality materials are more than worthwhile), a recent trip with Ms. Z turned up this sweet little punch embroidery kit.  The promise of "fast" and "easy" and "all included but the needle" along with the enthusiastic encouragement that only an almost three year old can provide resulted in the little box and a needle dropping into my cart.  

As I opened it up, I was reminded of some needlework kits from the 80's that my mother got that I remembered were called "Russian Punch" (I suspect they were really "Rush n' Punch" -- but, hey, cold war was on and Russian seems a much more interesting origin).  I'd love to know if the needles were the same.  All I can remember is that, at the time, I had a devil of a time with that needle.  

But this little kit lived up to its promises.  It was in fact both easy and fast and I enjoyed watching the texture come to life.  In addition to that, it came with more than sufficient floss -- something that is often not the case with these kits. The back is rather hideous looking,and I will never win any awards for my embroidery skills in general (the words should be stem stitch, but midway through the "w" I decided that it looked abysmal and switched over to back stitching) but I'm fine with the final result.  Even better, it went over well with Ms Z -- who took it to show her father and only gave it back when I traded her the box and promised that it would be on her wall after I found a frame.

Given that it was simple, and I have no idea of the half-life of a child who likes her mom's needlework is, I managed to procure the frame mere hours after finishing it, as well as another kit with a different butterfly.  And no doubt there will be some more Googling tonight for other punch needle kits or patterns that feature Z's favorite flutterbys.