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ALL ABOUT THREAD

How do you determine Consumer Thread Preferences?
- You ask.

Coats & Clark, the world’s largest manufacturer of consumer sewing threads, conducts periodic independent nationwide consumer research. In 2004 Coats & Clark commissioned a study by Research Inc. (an independent research company located in Atlanta, Georgia) to gather information about consumer attitudes and expectations relating to thread.

The study concluded that, when talking about thread, the following top five attributes are most important to sewers (which of course includes machine quilters), in order of importance:

1. Thread Doesn’t Break
2. Thread Doesn’t Tangle or Knot
3. Thread Colors Available to Match Fabric
4. Thread Is Good Value For The Money
5. Thread Doesn’t Lint In Machine

So…how do the Star® Brand products meet these consumer expectations?

Breakage can be caused by a number of factors:

1. Thread Quality
2. Needles (Wrong size, wrong type, wear)
3. Machine Tension Setting
4. Machine Maintenance
5. Incorrect Thread Delivery

Other articles in our web site will cover needles, machine tension, maintenance, and thread delivery with articles from quilting experts. This section will concentrate on thread quality.

So…How can you determine if thread is good quality?

1. Quality of the Raw Materials
2. Construction
3. Processing
4. Brand You Trust

Because Star® Threads are designed to meet the needs of very discriminating, demanding, often professional quilters they are made from the finest raw materials available, with the correct construction, using special processing, and they come from a company with over 190 years of thread making experience.

Let’s look at the Star® threads as an example of how to determine quality in your thread. There are six cotton thread and two synthetic thread choices in the Star® Galaxy of products:

Cotton:

• Star® “Machine Quilting & Craft”
• Star® “Multi-Color Machine Quilting & Craft”
• Star® “Professional Long Arm”
• Star® “Lite”
• Star® “Hand Quilting & Craft”
• Star® “Multi-Color Hand Quilting & Craft”

Trilobal Polyester:

• Star® “Bright”

Metallic

• Star® “Shine”

Quality Raw Materials:

Cotton comes in many grades and lengths. The longer the cotton staple is, the better the thread is, and all of the Star® cotton threads are made from Extra Long Staple Egyptian Cotton (ELS) the longest staple available. Extra Long Staple cotton creates a much stronger thread with less lint (and greater strength means less breakage and less down time).

For Star® Bright, continuous filament trilobal polyester provides a strong, durable, lint free option to long arm quilters. Trilobal refers to its three sided construction that gives this thread is exceptional luster.

The metallic thread used in Star® Shine comes from the worlds best metallic thread manufacturer in Japan. It has a strong nylon inner core with a coated polyester cover that actually includes pure silver.

Construction:

The Star® Brand threads are constructed to meet the various needs of the individual application.

Star® “Machine Quilting & Craft”, “Multi-Color Machine Quilting & Craft”, and “Professional Long Arm” are designed for machine quilting, long arm quilting, and piecing. To meet the needs of these applications they consist of 3 plies of ELS cotton for strength and performance. They are sized at a medium sized TEX 35 for excellent stitch definition, without being too “thready”. They have the proper twist which gives added strength, and holds the fibers together in a way that prevents snarling, looping, and knotting.

Star® “Lite” is designed for piecing, long arm quilting, micro stippling, and appliqué when a finer thread is desired. It consists of 2 plies of ELS cotton with a higher twist to give it strength without bulk. It is sized at a finer TEX 30.

Star® “Hand Quilting & Craft” and Star® “Multi-Color Hand Quilting & Craft” are designed for hand stitching. They consist of 3 plies of ELS cotton with a special Glace’ Finish which smoothes down the fibers, lubricates the thread, and prevents tangling and knotting. Since hand quilting draws threads through the fabric and batting so many times it is constructed for strength and to prevent fraying. (Please note that the Glace’ finish used on Star® Hand Quilting threads is a starch based finish which could potentially build up in the thread path on a sewing machine, therefore we do not recommend it for machine quilting).

Star® “Bright” Trilobal Polyester was designed for the complexities of machine embroidery, and to be an excellent long arm quilting thread option for those that want a lint free, lustrous, strong, durable, color fast, UV ray & bleach resistant thread.

Star® “Shine” Metallic was engineered to provide a smooth, strong, round thread that doesn’t curl. This makes it an excellent thread for both machine embroidery and long arm quilting.

Processing:

All of the Star® cotton machine quilting threads are mercerized.
Mercerized threads are
“treated, under tension, in a solution of caustic soda which causes the fibres to swell and become rounder in cross-section. Mercerizing enhances the luster and increase the strength of the fibres. Dye affinity is also enhanced(1)

(1) – The Technology of Thread & Seams
- Third Edition

In other words mercerization gives Star® cotton machine quilting threads their exceptional color intensity and luster which is why the appearance of the stitch is superior to some of the other cotton threads.

Star® hand quilting threads are not mercerized as they are processed with the Glace’ finish.

All Star® threads are dyed and finished in our plants in the U.S.A. (except for Star® “Shine” where the color is part of the thread construction when made in Japan).

Brand You Trust:

There are many, many threads, in the market today from companies of all sizes and from all corners of the world. A consumer needs to beware of unknown brands. The Star® Brand has been around since the early 1900’s. A brand does not continue growing for 100 years without gaining the trust of the consumers that buy it. We work hard to maintain the brand by continuing to research the best threads for quilting applications. To assure your satisfaction we have a consumer service hotline at 1-800-648-1479.

Tangling and knotting can be caused by

1. Incorrect or unbalanced twist
2. Incorrect finish

   A. Twist is the force that consolidates the fibers and plies of thread. There are actually two twists that occur in sewing thread, singles twist and ply twist.

   Singles twist is applied to combine the fine fiber strands in intimate contact, aligning the strands parallel to each other. This creates the individual ply of thread. Singles twist is applied in the opposite direction of the ply twist. Without this reverse twist a conventional thread could not be controlled during sewing. The individual plies would separate during their repeated passages through the needle and over the sewing machine control surfaces.

   In the Star® Threads ply twist then combines two or three individual singles threads into the finished thread. Twist levels are carefully calculated and tested to give the best overall performance in the applications for which the thread is designed.

   Twist is defined as the number of turns inserted per inch. If the twist is too low the yarns may fray and break – if too high the resulting liveliness in the thread may cause snarling, looping, knots or spillage.

   B. Finish refers to the thread lubricant applied to the thread to give the thread good lubricity characteristics and needle heat resistance. Too much finish can make a thread slippery, and messy, and too little can increase friction.

   All Star threads are engineered to run smoothly by hand, on your home machine, or on your long arm.

Star® Machine Quilting threads come in over 100 colors. Quilting fabric and trends are studied to make sure that nearly any fabric available has a match in the Star line. We stay abreast of developing color trends through participation in the Color Marketing group, which is an international association of color designers whose major focus is to identify color and design trends and to “translate” those trends into color palettes for manufactured products. We also solicit color opinions from quilting professionals as we did with the expansion of the Star® Multi-Color Machine Quilting color range where participants of the Quilt Market were able to vote on a color selection.

Star® threads are priced to be a value to the consumer. This chart gives a comparison between Star recommended retail pricing and the prices of several competitors:

While Star products are not always the cheapest you need to beware that cheap threads probably do not have the same quality. On the other hand, high cost does not necessarily mean better quality.

As linting has been shown to be a major concern of quilters, especially professional long arm quilters, we have studied the causes of lint, and how to reduce or eliminate it. Cotton thread is a natural product so it will always have some lint, but we have taken the following steps to reduce it:

• Using the best available Extra Long Staple (ELS) Egyptian Cotton available
• Tighter singles twist (holds fibers in better)
• Increased combing of the fibers (combs out imperfections)
• Using a continuous gassing process with slower gassing (Our cotton threads are passed over a gas flame to burn off the excess fuzz. We use a slower speed to burn more fuzz)
• Warp Mercerization on the most advanced equipment available.

We now also offer a lint free option with Star® “Bright” Trilobal Polyester.

In conclusion, when you are looking for a thread to meet all your quilting needs, always look to Star® Brand threads for thread that doesn’t break, doesn’t tangle or knot, with colors available to match your fabric, that has low lint, and is a good value for the money.