Good evening friends. Today we got our new stand for Glide Thread all set up and loaded! (and when I say we, I mean not me, but the girls at the shop) So I decided tonight I would go over a few things about Thread.
We sell Aurifil and now Glide in our shop, we have been using both and have had great success with both products.
Aurifil is a 100% cotton thread and has a wide variety of weights and uses.
For weight the higher the number the thinner the thread is.
We have some of all the weights (Floss, 12, 28, 40, 50 and 80 weight) of Aurifil thread in a variety of colors. For the 40 and 50 weight we have both the large and small spools, and we usually have cones in some of the more neutral colors. If we don't have exactly what you are looking for we can order it in for you.
For all the details of which thread to use and when just follow this link
The two most commonly used are 40weight and 50 weight, I do use both for piecing but keep it to the same weight in one particular project. If a quilt has a lot of piecing or small blocks I do prefer the 50 weight as it is a little thinner, so it takes less room in the seam allowance and also lies just a little flatter. I do like to use 40 weight when making bags. 50 weight is wound on an orange spool and 40 weight is on a green spool.
For piecing I primarily use a light grey or a light tan color. I have a lot of colors of thread, but the colors I normally use when binding my quilt or when making a bag. If I have to topstitch anything I will match my thread to the fabric.
Aurifil is cross wound, if you look at a spool the thread strands run up and down the spool in a Zig Zag format. To have it pull nice and even off the spool and through your machine the spool should be either laying horizontal at the top of the machine, or standing on a cone stand behind the machine. This will minimize thread breakages. Standing upright on top of the machine is not the best option.
Glide Thread is used mainly for Longarm and Machine Quilting, as well as Embroidery. The thread is Polyester.
We have had great success with the thread on our APQS Longarms, and Esther does use it on her Embroidery Machine. I have never tried to machine quilt with it on my regular machine so I cannot testify to how it works on a domestic machine. Esther did try sew a bag with it and it did not go very well.
We have 110 colors of the NO. 40 Glide thread in the shop, on the 1100 yard spools, the other colors, weights and sizes will be special order for now.
Thread literally holds our projects together, and so you want something that is a good product consistently!
I hear frequently that Aurifil is expensive, so Esther and I did some research. When priced out per yard, Aurifil is actually cheaper than many other quality threads that are currently available to purchase. Also a large spool of thread will last me about 5-8 quilt tops, depending on the size of quilts, and how intricate the piecing is. At $16 a spool that's just a couple dollars per quilt, so not a big expense at all.
Both Aurifil and Glide have very little lint. This is very good for your sewing machine. They are also both very smooth and consistent, also good for that machine of yours that you spent $100-$1000s of dollars on. Lint build up and poor quality thread can damage your sewing machine and cause you a lot of money to repair. (this doesn't mean you can skip out on cleaning your machine, you still need to do that)
If you are looking to expand your color stash of Aurifil we have the Aurifil Color Masters club in which you get 3 large spools every month for 12 months. We also have color boxes in a variety of combinations as another option. We don't have anything in place like that for Glide yet, but it may be coming in the near future.
I hope this answers some questions you may have had about thread, and if you have more please come see us at the shop or send us a message.
Have a great weekend, the weather here in Southern Alberta is looking fantastic for the weekend, so we are hoping for some time at the park.
Kayla
