Choosing the Perfect Thread Color for Your Quilt Design

Sometimes when we're machine quilting, the hardest question isn't what am I going to quilt, it's what am I going to quilt with? What color? It's often the hardest choice. You can always be safe if you choose a tone. Now, to understand what a tone is, we'll look at these three threads.

This is a pure hue. It's unadulterated, simple. This is a shade, it's had black added to it. And this is a tone. A tone is always going to be duller than the others.

And that dull tone is going to basically meld into the surface of your fabrics. Now, when I look at this fabric here or here, if this was my border fabric, what I see first is blue. Now, certainly the green is making some noise, but it's the blue I see first. So I'm gonna take these three threads and I'm gonna lay them out on the surface, and I'm gonna see which one I have the hardest time finding. And I'm gonna do that by laying them flat on that surface and pushing them into the surface.

And I'm gonna look at it here. When I look here, the one I have the hardest time finding is the one closest to me, which is the tone. If I move them down here to another area of the fabric, I wanna know if it's going to work down there also. So here I come down here, and I'm still thinking, it's the tone. It's the one closest to me.

This one is too bright. This one too dark. So again, I'm gonna come down here to the light area, the area that might be problematic. And with them all going across the light area, what I'm looking for is the one that is least noticeable. And here, proof positive that the one that's closest to me is the one that's least noticeable.

And it is the tone. So when you're choosing threads for multicolored fabrics, choose the color that is the one you see the most of and choose a tone or a grayed out version of that color. And your stitch line is going to meld with the surface and your mistakes are less likely to show and you're gonna see the quilting itself rather than the thread. So when in doubt, choose a tone.