Best Thread for Repairs

What item are you trying to repair (kayak spray deck, silk stocking, tent, gent's natty suiting... )? What kind of repair (darn, patch, replacement eyelet/seam tape)? What fabric (silk, wool, nylon, neoprene, coated breathable, silk velvet, Venetian cloth... )? One uses very different thread to darn silk stockings than one would to patch a sail or mend a seam in a wool suit. Please may we have more information so that our answers will be useful.

For *some* repairs, I used to use left-over thread and thread I bought by mistake. (Yea, rah, that sentence is in past tense! Even if DH took up caving again, he wouldn't wear *cotton* coveralls.)

Most of the time, you choose the mending thread the same way you chose the sewing thread: by color, fiber and weight. Often, you will want to match the original thread as closely as is practical.

I like to use six-ply cotton thread with plant-fiber fabrics, reeled-silk thread with animal fibers, and nylon with synthetics. Since nylon is hard to find, I usually use polyester instead, even when sewing nylon.

DMC makes an all-wool crewel thread, "Medici", which is fine enough for hand sewing -- I use Medici to sew patches on wool, and I use two strands of it as a substitute for darning wool.

Six-ply cotton comes only in white and ecru. When white won't do, I'll substitute the best three-ply thread I can find, or a *good* polyester. (There's a *lot* of weak, fuzzy threads on the market.)

Use heavy thread with a heavy fabric, and fine thread with a fine fabric. Most of the time, darning thread should be finer than the threads of the fabric, and singles, two-ply, and multiple strands meld into the fabric more easily than good sewing thread.

Though your first impulse is to use a heavy-duty thread to make a strong seam, in some situations, a stronger thread makes a weaker repair. A thread that is too thick for your fabric will punch large holes, and you get a tear-along-the-dotted-line effect.

Nor do you want a thread that is stronger than your fabric. For example, DH caught the pocket in his nightshirt on a doorknob and tore the shirt at one corner of the pocket. After patching the shirt, I reflected that the pocket was still at doorknob height, and sewed it back on with a feeble embroidery thread that would break before the patch tore. That was several years ago, and the repair is still holding.

Filament synthetic threads are particularly likely to be stronger than your fabric: the combination of very high strength with very small diameter can cut a soft fiber the way the wire on a cheese slicer cuts food. On the other hand, a badly-spun chopped-staple synthetic may be much weaker than a cotton thread of the same diameter, because the synthetic is slick and the fibers pull out of the thread easily. (I learned the hard way not to sew a synthetic fabric with three-ply cotton thread: the thread was weak to start with, then the harsh polyester threads of the fabric sawed away at it -- slowly enough that I'd made a few more shirts before the first one began to come apart in the washing machine.)

And darning is a whole 'nother post. See

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