Thread--quilters paint

How do you buy thread...by the project or when its on sale? Either way. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE only buy good thread.

I do both. I HATE wanting thread when the store is not open. Essentials thread has become one of my favorites for solid colors. King Tut is my favorite for variegated.

For Machine embroidery it depends what I am embroidering. Although looking in my thread bins I see a clear trend to Floriani and Madeira. That is also in part to thread set sales, or thread that comes with an embroidery project kit.

For hand embroidery I use DMC almost exclusively.

Serger thread I always try to buy on sale, except Woolly Nylon is never on sale when I am, ready to do a project. :-/


Now to, I am almost done cutting out all the pieces for the pillow covers, should be embroidering by this afternoon (unless we get thunderstorms again). The Valances will come after. they will have to be cut one or two at a time. Yes, I already told you I was cutting, but there is a reason I have come back to it...

I have gone through a good 48 yards of fabric and 15 yards of deco bond on 1 clover blade. I had read in one of the Quilt show reviews (unfortunately I do not remember which one) that a group of instructors had tested rotary blades and the majority had prefered Clover blades.

I have tried a lot of blades; Gingher, Olfa, Fisker, etc, but never a Clover (I mail ordered these to be able to try). I had settled on Olfa as my favorite, but this blade is still going strong. I will make sure another lasts as long, but if it does, Clovers will be my new favorites...I will have a stockpile of Olfa's to use (yes I buy these on sale too) because I never want to be w/o a fresh blade when stores are closed. I would like to try KAI, but haven't run across the blades. I got a set of their scissors about 4 months ago and love them!

But I still like my original OLFA rotary cutter. its old..the new ones are too fat to fit comfortably in my hands. Bigger (wider around) is not always better if  any of you manufacturers are listening...this is my old baby-sporting its clover blade:

And if you get the drift through this post that I don't like to pay full price, yeah, that is part of being thrifty. Being thrifty allows more quilting to happen.

Now back to cutting :-/