How to Quilt: Matching Thread or Contrasting Thread?

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How to Quilt>Matching or Contrasting Thread

Quilter's Question:

Q: Is it best to use matching or contrasting thread?

A: Like so many other things about quilting, it depends….

For sewing patches together, I usually use white or black thread. Black only if all of the fabric in the quilt is dark. For everything else, I use white.

You could spend your life changing thread for each block, or using two different colors – one for the top and the other for the bobbin. Unless you press your seams open (which I don’t recommend too often), the thread won’t show, so I make it easy, and just use the same color all the time.

For quilting, if you would like your stitches to show, use contrasting thread. If you want the pattern to show, but not necessarily the individual stitches, then use matching thread. In the little wall hanging shown here, you can see how different the quilting stitches look in the solid fabric and in the fabric with a pattern. If I had wanted the stitches to show more in the fabric with the pattern, I probably would have used a contrasting thread – possibly black.

Click on the wall hanging to see the quilting stitches up close. You will see that the quilting stitches show up quite well in the solid purple border, and are more difficult to see in the other areas where the fabric has a pattern.

It’s ok to use many different colors of thread in one quilt, too. Several years ago, Stephanie and I started making a quilt together. It’s a story for another day how it all happened that way, but regardless, it’s all layered and being quilted. Well, it’s been “being quilted” for a few years now. But that’s not the story. The story is that for this quilt, we decided (or maybe I decided) to use different color thread in each block. These are metallic threads, and adding some sparkle to the already bright quilt.

Click on the pictures to see them close up. The picture on the left is the entire quilt, and you can see some general quilting patterns (regardless of the fact that it isn't completely quilted. The picture on the right is a close-up of parts of 3 blocks. The sparkle of the metallic thread shows up as well as the lack of sparkle in the other two blocks. This is an example of using different quilting thread for each block in a quilt.

Hope this answers the question. As always, make your quilt yours, and have fun with it! I'll admit it took me years to get to the point where I would experiment. No reason to wait - just do it.

Happy Quilting!

Penny Halgren
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