Which brand of embroidery thread do I buy?

Recently, a customer asked me what I thought about a particular brand of embroidery thread. That's such a great question, so I thought I'd share my answer here with all of you.

In my opinion, there is no 'right' or 'wrong' brand of embroidery thread. Just like there are lots of different sewing machine makes and models, there are many different brands of thread and you just have to find the brand that works for you. Not all brands will run smoothly in your machine.

When buying a brand of embroidery thread that you haven't used before, I recommend buying only a few spools of it and actually running it on your machine before buying a lot of that brand. In fact, it's great if you can buy a few spools of a multitude of brands. Use the different brands of threads and stitch out the same embroidery design with each brand.

Then you can step back and evaluate each brand of thread. How did your machine like that thread?  Each brand of thread will run differently on your machine. Not all machines 'like' all brands of thread.  After you stitch out the design, ask yourself these questions:

            *Did the thread break a lot?

            *Was there a lot of lint in your bobbin casing when the design was finished?

            *Did the thread get tangled a lot?

            *Do you like the quality/look of the stitch out?

Ask yourself this after using each new brand of thread. And if you are using the same embroidery design it will be easy to lay them all out and compare the quality. Then you can buy what ever brand you and your machine are the happiest with. There's no judgement based on what brand thread you buy...all of the brands are good, you just need to find the one that works best for you and your machine.

Quick story, when I lived back in Milwaukee, an embroidery club member and I had the same exact sewing machine, same exact model and everything. I loved using a particular brand of thread, but every time she used that brand it gave her nothing but trouble. It constantly broke on her, she got tangles and thread nests. She tried the brand multiple times (just in case she had gotten a bad spool). But in the end it only gave her grief, so she stopped buying and using that brand of thread. I still use that brand to this day and I've never had the problems that she had with it. So that just goes to show you, that each machine has a 'mind' of it's own. And like a lot of things in life, you'll learn by trial and error.

Good luck with your thread search..and most of all have fun with it! I love looking at all the colors of thread. Soo pretty! The hardest part is choosing which colors to buy.

Happy Stitching everyone!
- Kat  :)