Monday 30 September 2013

Thread - A New Addiction

I really never thought I'd be interested in buying thread. I've always tended to buy thread in store so that I can check the colour against my fabric. Similarly, I tend to stick to certain brands as I know that they'll be good quality. I knew if I wanted to use lots of free motion quilting on my robot quilt I'd need to expand my thread selection.

In the classes we were able to try out numerous threads on sample pieces. This helped me find out what I liked and, perhaps more importantly, what my machine liked. I then heard about the Cotton Cocktails pop up shop in August and saw there would be King Tut thread, this had been my favourite from the ones I tried. I had a nice (child free) morning out there and picked up a few reels of thread to get my robot quilt started. I'd taken my quilt top along to help me choose the thread. In case anyone is interested, I believe there is another pop-up shop planned for the 2nd November.

For me, the hardest thing about buying thread is that it seems expensive. I guess it's easy to compare it to what fabric you could buy with the money. However since I started quilting my robot quilt, I have realised that the thread really makes the quilt.

I needed some orange thread for the quilt and ended up adding lots more thread to my shopping. I have quite a bit on the way from Barnyarns (more on that when they arrive). I also bought some nice little sets from Mettler. A couple of years ago I was given a free reel of thread from them at a quilt show and I've never got round to using it (mainly because of the colour). I ended up letting my husband use it when he had a go at free motion quilting and actually it was really quite nice to work with.

I couldn't really resist the Summer and Winter bundles, which are stunning to look at. I would have had to pay postage for these as I was just under the amount that free postage kicks in at so I added a couple of reels of their quilting cotton to try. I chose some fairly neutral browns as I have a number of autumn fabrics.


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