Sewing related

Pati, I am not an expert. I am not 50 miles from home and no longer own a briefcase. (That's the definition of an Expert). Anyhow, when you want to do exquisite embroidery with ordinary DMC floss, do this. Cover your ironing board with a towel. Cut your floss into manageable lengths - something like 15". Strip them. That means - if you are using three strands, pull one of the three out and turn it so it runs in the opposite direction of the other two. Lightly spray your little groups with spray starch. Smooth the kinks out with your fingers and let them dry. While they are drying, you can mop the floor so you don't slide on the stray starch. Loosely . . . very loosely, wind your groups into neat figure eights. Voila! or viola, whichever. Your embroidery will be very well-behaved and gorgeous. About all I embroider these days is the antennae on bugs. I hope you'll try this. Polly

"Pati C." > Thread Heaven is designed to penetrate the thread more easily and is a

That's what I use, and it works great.

-Irene

Here is sneaky trick 2479. If like me you have older sewing machines with the external bobbin winding mechanisms, set up to wind a bobbin. The before you start winding, warm the beeswax in your hands. Keep the beeswax in one hand and set it against the thread just after the tension disc. Depending on the machine, you may be able to just hold the thread in the hand with the wax and skip the tension entirely, after all you are not putting this bobbin in the machine. Start the bobbin winding and when your other hand is free, let the thread run through your thumb and index finger. Beeswax is soft enough that this process works rather well for working it into the thead, and you don't get a lot of excess on the outside to boot.

Of course with the price of beeswax these days Thread Heaven may be a more economical solution for most people anyway. I am just lucky in that one of the local beekeepers sells unwashed beeswax cheap. Even so I am looking into getting some soft microcrystaline wax as is used in sculpting. For I use soft wax rather a lot for a number of things, and there just isn't enough beeswax available for the number of people who use it.

NightMist

I used Americana for my son's quilt. it was really nice thread, i was pleasantly suprised! and it was reasonable too! Glad i'm not the only one! amy in CNY

Connie, is there any way you could tape a safetypin (or something similar) to the front of your machine with the circle at the end centered in front of the spool? Then you could take the thread and run it from the spool, through that circle, and then on to the rest of the tension spools, etc. Just a thought...

Oooh!!! Another awesome idea that I didn't think of!!! :)

Thank you so much, Judy!!! I'll bet that'll work, too!! Which is great, cause I've lost my "big" spool pin cap!!!

Hugs!!

-- Connie :)

C&C is the only thread sold locally, so I use a lot of it. Debra in VA See my quilts at

Not true...I understood it completely.

Ummm ... ooookayyyyyy. It made sense to ME - so what are you tryin' to say???

Aha! Go ahead! Whatever you say now applies to BOTH of us!!

*points finger at Jeanne* Gotcha!!! :)

-- Connie :)

Me, too! I tend to use "words" like "thing-a-ma-bopper" etc. when I have a "mental-block" for the correct word... and I'm not tired or worn out -- at least you have an excuse, nzlstar*! BUT, I think most of us knew exactly what you meant!

Wa-cha-ma-call-it/what-ya-ma-call-it, whatz-it, thingummy, do-dad, thing-a-ma-jig, thingy, diddly bopper, dealy bop, dealy bobber, gizmo. Are there more? Debra in VA See my quilts at

"ME-Judy" wrote:

Howdy!

I love it when you talk technical.

She uses the word "Doohickey", & it's a cute blog, too: The WhizBangDoHickey comes w/ instructions:

quilt Gizmo:

R/Sandy -- *&^%$)(*

My dad says doob-a-sary. He's the only person I ever heard say that..... 'cept for me! But I got it from him. It's in my genes.

Leslie, Missy & The Furbabies in MO.

Got a bit tired of soup recently though - and my filter box must be overflowing - why can't they just use one e-mail addy!

Sally at the Seaside ~~~~~~~~~~ (uk)

nzlstar* wrote: