Choosing the Right Quilting Thread

[ I'm as enthralled with thread as most people are with fabric. Thread is just one of the most fun things that we can use on the surface of our quilts to really add some nice interest. But there are a lot of different types of threads out there, different brands, different weights and most people really don't know what to do with them. I collect thread and I play with it and play with it and play with it. And I really wanna know what every type of thread that is out there is capable of doing. One of the best things that you can do if you've decided that you really want to try to understand the value of thread in your quilting life, is to play with some of them. So here I have stitched out quite a few different threads. Some really lightweight all the way to really heavyweight. Basically any of the threads that I would put through the top of my machine. I haven't put anything on here that I would use for something like bobbin drawing, the really really heavy threads, but basically any thread that I might embellish with, embroider with or machine quilt with. This way I have a better understanding of how that thread behaves with my machine and how it sits on the surface of fabric and sits on the surface of a quilt. But one of the most important things you need to understand is the information that the thread manufacturers give you about their threads. Understanding what's printed on the spool is your first step in getting to know a thread. So here on this spool, it's a spool of cotton thread by Mettler, which of course the manufacturer's name is on there. A lot of times we get where thread is made, we get a color number and that way you can buy that thread again if you've run out and you need some more. You get the style, lots of makers have various styles and it's almost always abbreviated A-R-T and then some numbers that tell you what the style is. And that's telling you a little bit about the thread. You get to know how much thread is on the spool. What type of fibers make up the thread? In this case it's 100% mercerized cotton. And then one of my things that I think is the most important and that's the weight of the thread. And this weight is a number 50. Now the weight can be written in a lot of different ways. And sometimes that weight can be very confusing. If there's a number and then a forward slash and then another number that is usually the thread weight with the number of plys in the thread. It can say, let's see N-E and then a weight number or if we're really lucky, it can be like this where it actually says 30 W-T. So it makes sense to us. That's 30 weight. There's lots of different ways that that weight can be imparted to us. What we need to understand is that as the number gets smaller the thread gets heavier or thicker, and as the number gets higher then the thread gets thinner. And if it's thinner, it's weaker. If it's thicker, it's stronger. Thin threads sit on the surface in one way and heavier threads sit on the surface in a different way. Most of us, when we machine quilt, we wanna feel the fabric first and the thread afterwards, if at all. So, understanding how that thread sits on the surface becomes very important to us. So I highly suggest that you start stitching out some of the threads that you have on hand and then start picking up some other threads that you think might be interesting to work with. If you're a machine quilter then it could be very, very helpful and beneficial if you stitched out those threads. Here in this stout stitch out, what I did is I took some of my heavier threads and I stitched with a stipple far apart and then closer together to see how that thread looked on the surface. So here I've got heavy wools and silks and heavy cottons and I ended up way over on this end with really fine threads, so that I could see how they sat on the surface. And I spread the stitches out further and I made them really close together so that I can understand how that thread took up space on the surface. There are lots and lots of different weights out there. When I first started quilting, all we had 25 years ago was the 50 weight and the brand new 30 weight that was developed for long arm quilters. Now we've got tons of different threads in between along with lots of different makers' names. One of my favorite threads is a heavyweight silk. So this is a 24 weight silk. Beautiful if you want to get a lot of attention but not great if you want a quilt really close together because it's too heavy. This is a 24 weight wool and it is really nice and heavy, and it's a little bit furry, so you get a lot of attention with it too. Again, I wouldn't quilt close together only far apart. One of my favorite threads is a thread called Oliver Twist. It's a hand dyed thread made by a woman named Jane Oliver in England. And she goes out to her garden or any other place in nature and simply chooses color palettes that she thinks looks beautiful together and then hand dyes her threads. This is her 28 weight thread. And though I wouldn't quilt with it. I do do a lot of thread painting with it or if I'm gonna quilt far apart, about every inch, inch and a half, because for me, that's far apart, then I would use this heavier thread. But when I do that I feel the thread before I feel the fabric. So I wouldn't do that on a Love Quilt, a quilt that's gonna be cuddled with there on the bed but I definitely do it with an Art Quilt or something that's gonna go on the wall. The most commonly used thread for a long time for machine quilting was the 30 weight. And that's what this is. But now we've realized that we don't really need that heavy of a thread because what we really need to do is quilt closer together. So now the most common weight of thread is the 40 weight. Now this is a 40 weight Rayon and it's very shiny. And I like to do some work with Rayon but again, not on Love Quilts, not something I'm going to use. It's really slick and it doesn't knot off all that well. So sometimes the beginning and end of your stitch line comes loose and that isn't gonna be a good result for things that are gonna get a lot of wear. But it's great for things that are on the wall. This is another Oliver Twist but it is a much thinner thread. It's a size 40 thread. Now 40 weight is the most common thread being used now for machine quilting. We've realized that we really need to pull that quilting a little bit closer together. Commonly we're doing about every inch but some of us have realized that it's even better if we do about every half inch. I tend to over quilt. So I'm doing a lot of quarter inch quilting these days. And, this is probably the heaviest quilting thread that I would use for that close together of quilting. Now I do tend to do a lot of my quilting with 50 white thread and 50 white thread is what we've used traditionally for piecing. Now, most 50 weight threads are three ply and three ply can be twisted or it can be braided but a three ply is going to feel quite a bit different from a two ply. So the thread here is a two-ply RFL and it's got the same tensile strength because it's 50 weight as the Mettler 50 weight but it's going to feel a lot different in your hand and feel different on the surface. It embeds on the surface a little bit more than the three ply does. When I do heavy fill in the background. If I'm going to get really close together in a quilt I tend to go smaller than that even. So this is a 60 weight two ply Mettler. It feels a lot like the 50 weight two-ply RFL and it is wonderful for really close together quilting. Now, there are a lot of polyester threads out on the market these days and this happens to be a polyester. They usually aren't weighted. Normally we only see a weight number on natural fibers and polyesters manmade. However, some companies are now putting a weight on there. The weight is kind of a misnomer because it really doesn't have that same weight system. They're just telling us that it's equal to a natural fiber of that same weight. And the polyester can be really nice in negative space. However, keep in mind that we're still kind of unsure of how that polyester is going to affect the cotton in the long run, the cotton fibers of the fabric in the long run. So I use lots of polly on my wall quilts but not so much on my bed quilts. My favorite for negative space or really tight quilting for love quilts are quilts that are going to be used especially if they're going to be laundered is Catona by Madeira. And it's an 80 weight very thin fine cotton comes in a good number of colors. And because it's so fine I can stitch really close together. There's also silk. Now, silk is slightly stronger than cotton and there are a couple of different lines out there. One is by Guttermann and one is by Tire. I'm sure there's others. And these silks are so fine. They're 100 weight. So they're very thin and very fine. And they come in a very soft palette of colors but they're so thin that they pretty much match with anything. So I really suggest that you go out and buy some unusual threads or thread weights that you don't already have and play with them and see what they're capable of doing. See how much you like them or how much your machine likes them and see what beautiful things that you can stitch on your quilts.