Blending with Beige

Do you know what the most boring color ever is?  Beige!

• What do you wear when you want to disappear in a crowd?

Beige!

• When you are sewing seams and you don’t want the thread to show through on the front, and you want it to appear that there’s really nothing holding the whole thing together – what color do you use?

Beige!

I am a self-avowed lover of colors, patterns, and design.  The brighter and flashier the better.  Every time.  But here’s:

What I Didn’t Know (about that boring beige thread)

Barb taught me this when I showed her one of my projects once.  Looking closely, from the front, you could see the stitches marching down the seam.  Barb said it was because I used the wrong color thread (but I say it was also because I pressed my seams open so carefully).

Naively, I had assumed that because seams live on the back of projects, I could use whatever thread I had to hand and no one would ever be the wiser.  Barb swiftly disabused me of this notion.

From the front of a project, especially if you are a dedicated ironer, you will be able to see a quick glimpse of the thread that holds one piece of fabric to another.

There are two things you can do to fix this:

1. You can use a thread color that matches perfectly with the material

This works for specific projects – most particularly when you’re matching blacks.

There are two problems with that, however.

First you’ll never be able to collect enough thread (even if you’re a thread-a-holic like me) to match every fabric in every single project.

The second problem is that, eventually, you’ll want to match two fabrics with very different colors and temperatures, and “matching” thread will only match one side.

2. You can use beige thread as your go-to seam thread

Now when I say beige, I am speaking of a very specific shade of beige thread, because there are more shades of beige than almost any other color.  They range from just barely off-white to almost brown, to grayish browns, and I have tried quite a few of them.

Problems with the wrong beige thread are:

• White shows up very easily and so do the paler shades of beige thread.
• However – and this surprised me – if you go too dark or too tan, the thread becomes obvious again.

After trying many, many different shades, I finally settled on a creamy beige that combines the best of all the beige world, and disappears against almost any background.

This magical beige thread is AURIFIL #2310.

Beige #2310 comes on an orange spool that holds 1300 meters.  This is a lot of thread, but well worth it!  It’s a creamy color with just a hint of tan, and that color vanishes completely in almost any color material you can imagine.  It will even vanish on some textured or patterned black materials.

The Best Bottom Line Thread

I also use this same thread in my bobbin and it works great – at least for my machines.

Because it disappears so much – and you generally won’t care what color the back thread is on a seam – I double recommend using this thread as your go-to bobbin thread.

Note: I want to say a word here about those specialty bobbin threads that you can buy at most quilt stores.  They’re much thinner than your regular sewing threads and go a lot further.  It’s unbelievable how much you can get on a bobbin, and they seem to last forever.  They come in shades of cream, gray and black and I would advise you to give them a try.

The ones I have tried are Bottom Line Threads and a King Tut version.

However, I don’t use them and I blame Michael.  I used to use them and loved them, but ever since Michael decided he was my very own sewing machine repairman, they refuse to work in my machines.  I fought with continual thread breakage, huge thread snarls on the backs of projects, and endless seam ripping before it dawned on me what the problem was.  I experimented a little with my bobbins and discovered I was right, so now I load my bobbins with the same thread I use on the top, and both me and my machines are much happier.

 

P.S.  If I’m sewing black material, I usually use black thread to sew with. My favorite is AURIFIL #2692 and it does the same great job for me as the beige does.

You can read more about sewing with black threads, and all the reasons why and when you should and shouldn’t use them on my blog: Highlighting with Black.