Which thread colour?

In article , Hanne Gottliebsen writes

Ooh - I love that pattern. I've got to do a whole quilt in it some day.

I have no idea what you should do, but I'd love to see a pic of the quilt when you're finished.

I piece everything with white. About half through a 7500 meter cone of white mercerized cotton right now. (Don't ask, came from a quilt show vendor!) It seldom shows when pressing seams open, and never when pressing to one side. YMMD.

All my scraps are SMALL. I don't save confetti, but can use bits down to about 1" square. Very narrow strips (e.g. selvedges) get wound into balls, and someday I'll figure out how to do needle weaving. Roberta in D, Queen of the Scrap Heap

Ah Roberta You don't need to wait that long. In one of her books, Judy Dales said she has always wound her selvage strips into balls; but never knew what to do with them. I sent her an E-mail suggesting that she might impregnate them with essential oils and use them as pomanders in closets. So, there you go, I pass on my idea to you too!!

In article , Roberta Zollner writes

Roberta, I make those balls too. I have one for each of the quilts I have made. 4 so far. They are colorful and if I give it away I have the ball to remember it by.

Hmm... might give it a try! Roberta in D

A recent NQA magazine had a picture of a quilt made from the selvedges. I seem to recall it being fused onto muslin and looked like a strip qult. You could read the different fabric names and see those little color dots. I thought it was cool looking.

marcella

I usually use an off-white/ecru for everything, but I just used some grey and now I'm in love with that because it blends with most everything. I just used grey with some black piecing, and it looks AOK to me. But I'll keep this advice in mind with the white fabric...I don't piece with white fabric very often, but this makes sense to me...I shall use white with white!

Will it maybe need just a little more red? (Contrast might look great, but changing from white on black to black on white might be too effortful.)

Oops. I just re-read and you said "piecing," not quilting!

I think if you try to switch threads you'll get frustrated and it will take forever...unless each block is completely black or completely white, then I suppose you could switch. But you'll still need to sew black blocks to white blocks at some point.

I use grey thread on just about everything. Light grey on whites and soft colours, medium or dark grey on deeper colours. I have never had a problem with the grey showing through on anything. Can you try a light grey and see how it works?

I love your idea, though. I've been collecting blacks and whites for awhile,and have a lot of them, and had a rather elaborate plan in place for a Kaleidoscope quilt... but gosh, I like your idea! I might copy it!

Cheers,

lynne >

Ruth, I am so glad you posted a correction to this one. I nearly had to go get out a dictionary to check out the work effortful, since I didn't see the connection to my piecing at all. However, had I been talking about quilting, you would have been very right.

I still have no idea how this baby will be quilted - I hope it will speak to me as it comes together - so far it is still in a bag, unwashed, uncut, just from the store (several months ago, but 4 baby quilts and a 80th birthday quilt got in the way).

Hanne

Effortful: The U.S. Bill of Rights allows me to make up words if I want to. At this stage of my life, I forget so many words I'd not be able to finish a sentence if I didn't make up a new one when needed.

-- Ruth in Happy Camp

I thought it was a made up word, too! But I looked it up on the Merrium Webster site, and there it was!

Sonofagun! I don't know whether to be pleased or pi**ed. I still resent President Harding (wasn't it?) for "inventing" Normalcy.

-- Ruth in Happy Camp

Hullo Ruth Just be pleased that you are thinking along the same lines as the 'great and the good'!! I get the same feeling when I 'invent' something - usually a quilting trick these days! - and find later that it has been standard practice for ages LOL. . In article , Ruth in Happy Camp writes