How I choose my thread for allover quilting....

 

Just a heads up, the thread is a little hard to pick out in the pictures since the quilt is a little busy. Hopefully I can explain why I chose the thread I did for my latest quilting project that was a free motion allover pattern. You should see three pieces of thread spread out in the picture above. The top on is a light tan, the middle is pink, and the bottom thread is red.

  

 

Here are the same three pieces of thread shown closer on the white sash and red border fabric.  When you have such contrasting fabric in a quilt, sometimes picking out the thread is the hardest part.  So, I think of the colors that I like and pull out anywhere from 6-8 cones of thread that match the different colors in the quilt fabric.  Then, I lay them out like this across the quilt top making sure to hit as many colors of the quilt top as possible.  I didn't like these three because they didn't mesh well with everything - especially the red, since I had so much white fabric in this quilt, the red thread would have taken over the quilt in a bad way.

 

The next three thread choices were bright white, light blue, and cream.

    

If you look at the bright white (thread on the left) it is just too bright, the blue does not work with the rest of the fabrics and on the white it would have been too much. The cream is nice, but just not quite right.

 

So, since the other thread didn't work, and I was shocked that I didn't like the white, I tried out an ivory colored thread. It is still a little unnerving using the ivory with the red border fabric, but it will be better than red on white fabric.

 

 

So, the winner is a Glide thread named Pearl and it is amazing that this is the one that worked the best with all the choices of thread out there.

 

This is a nice thread, it is shining and runs through my machine great. When it comes to picking out a thread for your allover quilting, just lay out several threads and the one that disappears the best in all the fabrics in your quilt top is the best thread to use. At least, that's my opinion! Best of luck choosing your thread!