Tag Archives: Sulky

An unexpected twist

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Last week I bought two sets of Sulky 12wt cotton to try, having heard a lot of praise for them, and having enjoyed using one of their 12wt “Blendables” (variegated colours) in the Butterfly Wreath. Some of them (with a few others acquired since) were bought with a third version of the Hope rainbow in mind; the set of muted pinks and greens has no immediate purpose, but I just found the colour combination irresistible!

Two sets of Sulky 12wt cotton

“12wt”, or “12 weight”, by the way, refers to the thickness of the thread, or more accurately to its length: it is defined as the number of kilometres of thread in a kilo. So 12 kilometres of 12wt thread and 40 kilometres of a 40wt thread both weigh 1 kilo. This means that the higher the number, the thinner the thread; 12wt is roughly equal to two strands of standed cotton.

Before the Sulky threads arrived I took the opportunity to compare the thickness of my Blendables 12wt with a Weeks Dye Works perle #12 (they happen to be stored together as I got them both – plus a few others – when looking for just the right variegated green), mostly to compare thicknesses as you would expect the 12 in perle #12 to stand for its weight as well.

Weeks Dye Works perle and Sulky cotton

But as I put them down on white paper together I noticed something unexpected: Sulky blendables is a Z-twist! I’d never noticed this before because the Butterfly Wreath doesn’t use it for a stitch that shows up the difference clearly, like stem stitch.

I remembered that some years ago I purchased a few spools of another brand of 12wt cotton at the Knitting & Stitching Show. I dug out a spool of Wonderfil and yes, that’s a Z-twist too. But the WDW overdyed perle is, predictably enough, an S-twist like most other hand embroidery threads.

Three twelve-weight threads An S-twist and two Z-twists

And that last bit (“hand embroidery threads”) turns out to be the pertinent fact in this twisty surprise. Some research online brought up an interesting page on the website of thread manufacturer Yli, which says that “A thread with a Z-twist, or left twist, is engineered specifically for the sewing machine. The action of the sewing process tends to increase the twist of a Z-twisted thread, but can actually untwist a thread with S-twist, or right twist.” We live and learn! The threads are still perfectly usable for hand embroidery – I’ll just have to remember to work my stem stitch as outline stitch. Fortunately I don’t think many of the other stitches in the Hope design are affected; other than stem stitch just the whipping, probably. I wrote about the effect of the whipping direction in an earlier FoF, finding that I liked a Z-direction whip with an S-twist thread (that is to say the whipping and the thread twist go in opposite directions), so here I’ll have to do the whipping in the S-direction. Oh well, think of it as brain training.

Incidentally, coming back to the relative thickness of all these threads labelled as a size 12 – the Sulky thread is clearly thinner than the other two. Could it be because of a difference in twist? Sulky’s appears to be longer/less tight than either the WDW perle or the Wonderfil cotton. Must do a bit more research!

Four shades of green

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Not quite 40 shades of green in the Figworthy household at the moment (although if I went through all my thread boxes I could probably get together at least that number; but let’s not go there) – four are quite enough for now. They are the variegated greens I am trying out for the wheatear border on the third Floral Gems design, which will be made into a workshop, and they are Weeks Dye Works (WDW) perle #12, Cottage Garden (CG) perle #12, Chameleon perle (Cham) #16 and Sulky Blendables (SB) 12wt.

Four shades of green to try

Let me start with an apology and a spoiler – this is not going to be a detailed analysis, just an impression of what the threads are like to work with; and I like all four threads.

Having got that out of the way, let’s have a look at the four threads in close-up. WDW (top) looks a little heavier than the other threads, even though CG is a perle #12 as well. SB is a 12wt which I had assumed (although I have not been able to find any very clear-cut information about it anywhere – thread weights are complicated!) to be about the same thickness as a #12, but it looks thinnest of the four, possibly because it is quite tightly twisted. It wasn’t until I looked at this close-up picture that I noticed another difference between SB and the other threads: it is a Z-twist, whereas the others are the more usual S-twist. I knew some silks and rayons are Z-twists but didn’t think there were any cotton ones – you learn something new every day! (I’ll say a little more about Z-twists later.)

The four threads close up: WDW, CG, Cham, SB

In all of the following samples I worked with 90cm (1 yard) lengths; far too long according to received wisdom, but I dislike fastening off and on too often, and it seems to work for me. Well, generally. With perles, which are twisted, it can lead to the thread bunching up (very noticeable with Treenways’ fine cord, for example, which is a very tight buttonhole twist – you very definitely need shorter lengths there!) The stitch is wheatear, which gives the wreath outline a bit more interest than a plain chain stitch. It is essentially a reverse chain stitch (shown here by Mary Corbet) with straight stitches sticking out, and like chain stitch works well in a circle.

First up is WDW perle #12 (2171 Emerald). It was occasionally a bit tangly but the variegation has a lovely effect, it’s a beautiful colour (I got another shade, 2166 Bayberry, which is even closer to what I was looking for, but it came too late for me to use it in these experiments) and it’s exactly the right thickness – it has enough body to show off the colour, but is thin enough for the stitch to have good definition.

Weeks Dye Works perle #12 Weeks Dye Works perle #12 close-up

Next is Cham perle #16 (Fennel). I knew Chameleon Threads, a South-African company, from their hand-dyed stranded silks – in my silk boxes you will find most of the colours from their Shades of Africa range (used in Remember the Day). I found this #16 perle at the Knitting & Stitching Show; it’s a relatively new range, as yet available in a fairly limited palette which fortunately for my purpose includes this attractive, subtle green. It’s a nice, well-behaved perle to work with, and although obviously a bit thinner than the WDW it still gives enough coverage in the stitch to be an effective frame for the design.

Chameleon perle #16 Chameleon perle #16 close-up

The third thread is CG perle #12 (809 Oregano). Cottage Garden is an Australian company, and their range includes stranded cotton as well as #8 and #12 perle (but no #5, which means I can’t use them for Hardanger on my usual 25ct fabric). Although off the skein it looks a bit thinner than WDW #12, it stitches up with more or less the same look. It’s fairly well-behaved, even with my 90cm lengths.

Cottage Garden perle #12 Cottage Garden perle #12 close-up

And finally SB 12wt (4086 Cactus). As I mentioned above, this is different from the other three threads not only because it isn’t a perle, but also because it is a Z-twist. This means that when looking at the twist in the thread, the slant has the direction of the diagonal of the letter Z; in an S-twist the slant goes the other way. There is a little bit more about it in this post about whipped stitches, and a lot more in this recent post on Mary Corbet’s blog.

SB is very tightly twisted, but unexpectedly it doesn’t bunch up like some of the others – it is a very pleasant thread to work with, and (not unimportant when considering threads for workshops or kits) it works out much more economically than any of the others. It has a nice crisp look, and although the variagation is a bit stronger than I would have liked, it doesn’t break up the unity of the wreath.

Sulky Blendables 12wt Sulky Blendables 12wt close-up

So which do I like best? If I were just looking at the threads, how they handle and how they stitch up, I’d go for Weeks Dye Works; it is my favourite where colour and variegation are concerned, and in spite of some tangling it is comfortable enough to work with. I just really like the look of this thread in wheatear stitch. Chameleon and Cottage Garden I will happily use again, but they wouldn’t be my first choice. In the end, however, I have to bear in mind what I am choosing this thread for – kits and workshops. The materials have to be of good quality, but it is just not viable to pick anything too expensive. In trying out several hand-dyeds I was probably being a bit unrealistic to begin with, and Sulky makes a good alternative – it is a high-quality thread with the interest of variegation, but mass-prodused and therefore more affordable than the more labour-intensive hand-dyed threads. So in spite of its rather unfortunate name (whoever thought that was a good idea?) Sulky Blendables will be my choice for the Floral Gems.

New threads, vanishing threads and non-existent threads

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Putting together a new workshop/kit often means looking into various materials, threads and other bits and bobs that would be suitable for it (I know, it’s a hard life smiley). In this case I was looking for a non-divisible variegated green thread a little thicker than a strand of stranded cotton. Three of the possibles I’m considering at the moment are (from left to right) Weeks Dye Works perle #12, Chameleon perle #16 and Sulky Blendables 12wt. I’ve never tried any of these before so I’m looking forward to stitching some samples with them.

Weeks Dye Works perle #12 Emerald Chameleon perle #16 Fennel Sulky Blendables 12wt Cactus

The WDW shade is called Emerald, and I’ve got one called Bayberry on back order from Sew & So – it looks lovely but I think it may be just a little too thick for what I want. The Chameleon one, a shade called Fennel, I picked up at the Knitting & Stitching Show; about the right thickness, but not many shades available unfortunately. You may notice that the Sulky image (of a shade called Cactus) is a stock one, as I ordered this from America and it hasn’t arrived yet. There is another possible green in the Blendables range but that looks rather dark online. I had hoped to find them at the K&S Show so I could see them in the flesh, but either they weren’t there or I missed them – easily done with so many stands there!

The vanishing thread is Tamar Embroideries’ mercerized cotton (which used to be called brodery cotton). It is being discontinued, not because it wasn’t popular, but because they can’t get the thread anymore for dyeing! So goodbye to this lovely variegated green thread that was perfect for little lazy daisy leaves. I hope they’ll find a good substitute soon.

Tamar Embroideries mercerized cotton shade 243

And the non-existent threads? I dreamed them. In one of those very realistic-seeming dreams a friend was explaining a printing machine to me, which turned into a weaving machine; beside it was a wooden rack with hanks of thread hanging from it, all labelled. I particularly noticed two of them, very attractive slightly fluffy threads not unlike chenille. The labels identified them as “fine priel” and “open priel”.

I woke up and the dream turned out to be as illogical in the cold light of day as dreams usually are, but I did remember the name of the thread! Alas, the only priels I managed to find were a mountain and a meandering stream; neither of them at all fluffy and both impossible to stitch with.