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wubbiebear May 16, 2011

I finally figured out how to thread a needle.  For those of you who don't know, I do not have eyesight, so that's a hard part of sewing.  Now if I can just figure out how to do those pesky patterns. *Does a victory dance*

rkr4cds May 16, 2011

Hi Wubbie,

I've been mulling over the tangling/knotting thread question ever since you posed it.. and it was re-activated in another thread. We were all thinking about treating the problem (e.g., the litle blue box of wax treatment - Magic Thread?  Magic Wax??) instead of what occurred to me - solving the basic problem which could more possibly be the thread itself.

Most of the sewing thread available is cotton spun over a polyester core. With the abrasion of going through the cloth, the cotton wears out more quickly and the fraying fiber are more likely to catch on each other as they pass each other going in and out in near proximity.

So it's the quality of the fiber you're using that often affects how easily the sewing proceeds.

For this reason, when I began hand-sewing my minis, I switched to using only 100% polyester tread, which doesn't wear out from abrasion as quickly and then looked for a nom-stretchy one, as some brands were rather stretchy. Mettlers Metrosene Plus was what I chose and initially it was Swiss-Made. It had moved on to Germany within a few years after I began purchasing it and the quality suffered: it wasn't as tightly twisted. I felt that it was then more on a par with Gutermann's, which was a German company but then moved to Mexico and suffered the same fate. I went on eBay® and bought the Swiss made after that.

But here are 2 spools of 'Swiss' Mettlers which I photographed last night. "It was a dark & stormy night...." nearly 7 PM and not ideal conditions but I had intended to post this today anyway. I don't have any Gutermann's on hand but Molynyke (sp?) is a close second to it for this purpose.
You can see that the twist is so tight in the Mettlers that the colors reflect even in low light light and they fairly glow.
But in the other polyester the surface looks dull because it's less tightly twisted so it's fuzzier.'

If I had to say that there were any minuses to this thread, it would be that it is so tightly twisted that it rarely formed that 'bend' at the needle's eye. This is both a Good thing and a not-so-good thing.
Good - the thread never wore off it's cotton covering so it never got fuzzy and tangled or broke at those points.
N-S-G - I had to watch—especially at the beginning of the threading of a new strand—that I didn't pull the needle right off the thread, just because it didn't seat itself in any particular spot along the length! This is as close as I can usually get the threads to stay together.
The needle is a John James #8 - large eye - Embroidery, approx 1¼" long.
I have several hundred of #8 & 10 (at least!!) and no longer hand sew.
Anyone may have them or at least some for a SASE.

rowarrior May 17, 2011

Congrats on your revelation!