What is in a thread?
Thursday, February 12th, 2009Dear Liuxin, I am a relative newcomer to quilting but since joining our local group, Lakeside Quilters, my skills have come along in leaps and bounds. And I’ve discovered the joys of hand quilting (using your method) and have fallen madly, passionately in love with needle turn applique. Which brings me to my question.
There are so very many threads on the market now – there ‘s even ‘thread clubs’ – that I am now totally confused as to what thread is best for what job. Is silk best for applique? Cotton best for quilting? And what about American linen? And what is Aurifil?
Please, I’d be most grateful if you could clear it up for me. I’ll be eagerly watching future QC issues for your reply.
Kind regards,
Barbara Randell from NSW
Dear Barbara,
It is so nice to hear from you. With quilting increasingly becoming an art form, more and more quilters create quilts as an intellectual challenge and thereby, growing demands for better products constantly compel manufacturers and inventors to create new products. As a result, the market is constantly being filled with the latest innovations at a speed and scale like never before.
With the abundance of supplies, it is often confusing as to what to choose when it comes to finding the product best suited for our particular purpose. To keep a clear head in the face of ample choices, I try to distinguish the difference between NEW products from GOOD products – finding good products out of new products.
When it comes to threads, new threads are not necessarily better products. I keep my eyes open to new products and try them as they come by, testing them against the few good products that have become favourites of mine for particular objectives in quilt making.
For hand quilting, I focus on which thread will give me a better result at a smaller cost: YLI Select 100% Cotton in 1000 yd spool tops the list of threads meet these criteria. The three characteristics that make it my favourite hand quilting thread are:
Glazed – doesn’t tangle without waxing
Stiff – creates better visual depth of your stitches
Thin – easy to pull thread through the quilt and stitches look smaller than that of thick threads.
Best of all, you will definitely get your money’s worth with this thread (in Australia, you spend $12 for a spool of 1000 yards of thread)! In terms of needle turn applique, I prefer fine yet strong thread for blind/invisible stitches. Without very fine thread, even if you learned the entire list of needle turn techniques I teach in my applique book and classes, you will not be able to achieve the best result without flaring the project.
As the seam becomes narrower, for example around a sharp point of a leaf, blind stitches must be placed closer to each other than the width of seams must be placed closer to each other than the width of seam. When the number of stitches per unit increases, it must be balanced by reducing the bulk of the threads. This means changing to thinner thread in order to prevent flaring of your project. What causes project flaring? Overcrowding the material with too much or too thick thread – stitching is not just making beautiful shapes, it is adding thread into the fabric. See my point?
Meeting my criteria for the best applique thread is, of course, YLI #100 silk thread. YLI is the name of the manufacturer and #100 is the weight/thickness of the thread. Usually, thread thickness are indicated as #100, #60 or #40 etc. on a spool; the higher the number, the thinner the thread.
Selecting threads for machine work can be worked out in a similar fashion. I used YLI #100 silk thread for my very densely machine quilted quilt because the more stitches I put into the same area of the quilt, the thinner the thread should be for better results. As a result, my quilt not only drapes well and no breakage at all until the whole spool runs out. I know we were all told to buy more needles or thicker needles for machine quilting in case your thread breaks too much. Can one keep increasing the thickness of a needle just to accommodate thicker thread? No. The thicker a needle against the density of your materials and batting, the hotter it gets when machine stitching – this will break more needles (unnecessary cost to you) and more frustration and more threads.
For further information, read my book Perfect Hand Applique with Thimblelady. It explains in full how to match material to your chosen designs, then how to match needles and threads to the materials and battings… it is a scientific balance of the three.
Following the principles of selecting the best suited threads you need for better quilts and easy sewing, let me answer your questions as follows.
Q: Is silk best for applique – cotton best for quilting?
A: The threads most suitable for quilting and needle turn applique vary depending on the desired result. It isn’t what material the threads are made of but what they do best that is the key. I select #100 silk thread not because it is silk but because it is the thinnest thread in the world right now and it gives me beautiful and fine applique stitches like no other. Why no one makes #100 cotton? Because cotton is a shorter fibre, make it that thin a thread, it won’t be nearly as strong as silk which is of a much much longer fibre. I am going to stay with this thread until a better thread is invented. The best quilting thread is the one that gives me better quilting stitches, easy sewing without pain and is the best value for my money. I like #40 glazed cotton for my hand quilting for its hairless and stiff result that makes my hand quilting stitches neat and sharp and my quilt soft and even.
Besides, talking about the strength of thread, YLI #100 silk is what I use for my very fine machine quilting – it is the only thread that doesn’t break (not even once!) before the whole spool runs out, no matter which machine I use it on. I like the YLI Select Cotton thread for my utility quilts, on which I put very little quilting stitches in order to keep its drape – machine quilted quilt is usually stiffer in comparison to a hand quilted quilt using same design and same thickness thread because machine can’t quilt with a single thread like the hand quilting does. It is the amount of thread you add into a quilt determines how stiff a quilt will be.
Now you must try the #100 silk thread for the whipstitch piecing using double strands of thread – double thread tangles less and keep your stitched area soft at the same time.
-By Liuxin My advise column in Australian Quilters Companion
