You've got your top. You've got batting. You've got backing. You have one last product to choose to continue your quilting journey: thread! Now, many people just use some boring neutral cotton to quilt so it either blends away or stands out in all its blandness, but this quilter, she is a THREAD JUNKY! Most people make a quilt just for a fabric or a pattern--I make a quilt just for the thread. I have an enormous stash of thread which probably will be passed down to my great grandchildren because even if I quilt every day for the rest of my life and never buy another cone or spool, I'll still have leftovers. I should have insurance for my thread collection.
So, now that you know who's talking to you, you will probably understand my passionate pleas for consideration of thread type, color, weight, etc...The first thing I will say is this: you have spent a lot of money already on fabric, pattern, sewing machine, batting, backing, etc...Do not cheat yourself with cheap quilting thread. It will be linty, ugly, break more often, and look, well, cheap. For light quilting, you'll rarely use more than one spool. One good spool costs in the range of $8, one cheap costs in the range of $3. You're saving yourself $5 and making your life miserable.
Okay, onward. The main factors to consider with thread are: material, weight, color, and any processing that the thread has undergone.
Let's start with material. Cotton is the most common material used for thread, but there is also polyester, nylon, rayon, silk, and blends thereof. I will say that in general, threads that are a blend of materials are blended to be cheap, not to create any quality. I'll start by addressing the qualities of each material, pros and cons, etc...
Cotton will be duller in sheen than say, poly, rayon, or nylon, and because it's spun cotton fibers, will necessarily have lint. The amount of sheen and lint will be related to the quality of cotton. Extra long staple is the best type of cotton--don't be fooled by labels like "Egyptian" or a lack of staple length. If it's ELS, it will say so, if it isn't, it will not say anything. Extra long staples mean that the thread will be stronger, smoother (lumps on thread are called "slubs"), and less linty. Other terms you will see on cotton thread are "gassed", "mercerised", "waxed", "double-gassed", or "lint-free". Gassing and mercerising are both standard procedures for almost all cotton, not just thread. Gassing is the process of passing thread over flames to burn off stray fibers and make the thread look smoother. Almost all cotton threads undergo this process and it's nothing to brag about. Mercerising is a chemical treatment that causes cotton fibers to swell, be more receptive to dye, and unfortunately to be a little lintier. It also prevents decay in the fibers. Again, standard for cotton, nothing to brag about on your label. Double gassed just means their thread was so fuzzy and lumpy they had to burn off stray fibers twice, again, really not a bragging point. Waxed or lint-free should both be huge red flags to the machine quilter. Lint-free cotton is an impossibility without coating it with something, and if you coat it with something and put it through your machine, it will leave residue in your machine, and your machine will be sad. Do not use any COTTON labeled "lint-free", "waxed", or "glazed" through your sewing machine. These threads are designed for HAND quilting. Glazing (or waxing) makes thread stronger and slicker to hold up and be easier for pulling through the quilt over and over as you do with hand-quilting. Therefore, you should also never put anything labeled "hand-quilting thread" through your machine, it is undoubtedly covered in something.
Cotton is grabby so it will sink into your quilt a little more than some threads and create nice texture, the dull nature of the fibers also gives a more subtle, sometimes old-fashioned look. A variegated (ie changing colors at regular intervals) cotton that matches your quilt top can virtually disappear. Cotton is very soft and supple and fairly easy to machine or hand quilt with, the downside is the lint that it produces and that it can be weak, depending on the brand. Overall though, cotton is a great choice, two of my favorite cottons are Superior's King Tut, and Sulky's blendables. Sulky's tend to be a little weaker and harder to work with, but they have alternating lengths of color rather than regular intervals. Cottons tend to be the #1 choice of hand quilters because they don't fray.
Polyester is my other favorite quilting fiber--but let me be clear: you should only quilt with HIGH quality polyester thread. If you get bargain bin poly, it's fit to garrote someone with and nothing more. Using a cheap poly that wasn't designed for quilting is liable to tear your quilt. High quality polyester isn't going to tear your quilt. Polyester comes in two main forms: spun poly, which is designed to look like cotton but be stronger and lint free, or extruded poly, where the fibers are long polyester fibers spun together, which has a high sheen and no lint. Extruded poly is often referred to as "trilobal" because the strands are triangular in shape, giving them the lovely sheen they exhibit. If you want a little shine without going to metallic (which are also poly), a trilobal is very nice. So Fine! the thread I like to piece with is also a poly, but a spun poly and it's fantastic for the bobbin when quilting because it just blends away and you can fit a ton on the bobbin. A very fine poly will also be stronger than a very fine cotton, and is perfect for getting a hand-quilted look on your machine. My favorite polys are: Superior's So Fine!, Rainbows, Lava, and Brytes, Mettler's Poly Sheen, and Signature's Pixelles. The advantage is the sheen, they tend to break less than cotton, and they have no lint. The cons are the sheen (if you don't want sheen) and that they will melt if exposed to an extremely hot iron. They also fray easily when over handled so they are not necessarily the best choice for hand-quilting, but they are very slick.
Rayon and nylon are not suitable for quilting, even if they are pretty. Some invisible threads (clear monofilaments) are nylon, but they do not age well and you're better off getting a poly monofilament. Rayon is very soft and shiny, but very very weak and designed for machine embroidery. I've quilted with rayon in the past and it breaks often and my quilting didn't hold up well.
Silk, while more expensive, is available in finer weights than other thread because of how strong silk fibers are. 100 weight silk is common and very strong. Silk has a beautiful lustre, but can also melt away into a quilt. 100 weight silk is extremely fine and perfect for doing extremely dense background quilting. Silk has no lint either and is very strong. If you want your stitching to really show, you should use something heavier as most silk is very fine.
This brings us to weight. Thread weight is counter intuitive, the lower the weight, the fatter the thread--a 30 weight is very heavy, a 50 average, and 100 is extremely fine. There are multiple ways to express a thread's diameter, but the most common is weight, which is often combined with ply (the number of strands twisted together)--eg 50/3 is a common sight on cotton piecing thread and it means 50 weight, three ply. There is one simple rule with quilting thread: heavy to show, light to blend. If you want your actual stitches to disappear, leaving only texture, use a 50, 60, or 100 weight thread. If you really want the actual stitches to show, use a 40, 30, 12, or even 8 (8 weight will only go in your bobbin, which requires quilting upside down). 12 is about as fat as you can go through a needle. Don't be afraid to use more than one weight on a quilt. Say you're going to do a fancy motif--birds, feathers, vases, boa constrictors, who cares--you may want to do those in a big fat 30 and then do some dense fill to pop them up, using a 100. That's not to say you can't use a heavyweight for a background, it's just a different look.
My ultimate advice for choosing a thread is that if you have doubts, take some of your scraps from your quilt, a little extra backing and batting, make a wee sandwich, and practice quilting using different thread candidates, choose the ones you like and then you can rest assured that you like the effect on the fabrics of your quilt. Test squares are a common part of many a famous quilter's repertoire (I'd never thought to do such a thing until Ricky Tims told me to).
Get your thread and get ready, next time we're basting and discussing design possibilities.
Happy quilting!
No comments:
Post a Comment