There are two paths to apply thread to work. The most used on a sewing machine is top thread – it follows the usual thread path from the spool to the needle, and through the magic of the lock stitch is looped around the bobbin thread and drawn back to the top of the work.

This little video shows clearly all the moving parts that make up a stitch. You can see that the top thread travels through several steps to get to the fabric. It also gets pulled back and forth through the eye of the needle as the take-up releases it for each stitch and takes it up again. This wear can be absorbed by finer threads running through appropriate sized eyes, and a wide range of threads can be used.

In a perfectly counter-intuitive move matched only by the wire industry, thread weights are inverse to the actual size of the thing in question. The 50wt thread on the left, from Superior, is the finest I tend to use because anything smaller than that does not cover the underlying fabric in any useful fashion. The weights increase to 40wt, also from Superior, 30wt, from Sulky, and 12wt from Sulky. All these are 100% cotton threads, and three of the four are also variegated threads.

Once threads are too coarse to fit through the eye of a needle, they can be wound on a bobbin and worked from the back of the piece. I’ll take some pictures of that process and demonstrate in the next bench notes.

I wrote before about threads. This is a small sampler of four variegated threads I use routinely; three cotton, one rayon.

If you look at the samplers, you can see the Valdani and both Sulky threads have a long color change – there is a fair amount of each color on the thread. In close stitching, such as cobbling (small round circles) or small overlapping scribbles this long change gives depth and interest to the area covered. In lines, such as outlining or contouring or sketching, it means that the lines change color or character unless they are repeated, going back and forth over the line brings more different colors to it as well as making it a thicker line.

The King Tut, from Superior Thread, has a short color change, roughly every inch. This makes the thread read more like one color than several, as your eye averages the color within the area. I use these threads to blend different fabrics into a more cohesive mass. Because they are finer than the other threads, I also use them in the mid-ground and background of a piece.

I think the prettiest threads I use are the Sulky Blendable cottons – there are more different colors in one spool, and the patterns are more variable. I use these threads in the foreground of a piece, to keep details in the foreground from becoming an undifferentiated mass.

For a long time, I only knew of and used Sulky Rayon threads. They are easy to find, and come in many solid shades as well as the variegated versions. Rayon has a truly delightful sheen which is especially good for adding details and highlights to a subject, but it can get overwhelming in large areas.

Finding more variegated cotton threads, and variegations in different lengths, has helped my work evolve in a more painterly direction.

Frequently when I am making a piece, I check the back of it. Many people who see the backs say they are almost as interesting as the fronts (which is a distinctly mixed compliment) and wish there was some way to display both sides of a piece. I am amused by this, because the back is not the art, it is the supporting structure; the backs are more like backstage in a theater where a lot of work goes on to make the front look effortless and tell the story I am trying to tell.

This doesn’t mean I am not delighted with all the visible thread on the back, and on the front. While normally I use fabric for areas of color and texture, and add detail with stitching, sometimes a scene seems to lend itself to line work. For this barn, I pulled out all the gray threads I have, from shiny white to matte black and the in-betweens. Possibly the most unexpected thread I used has alternating sections of white and black, with no in-between shades. The color variation is so short, at one inch, there is no way to control what color goes where, so the resulting shrubbery and grasses look sun-dappled and unexpectedly deep.

While I like many threads for many different reason, I have a particular affection for variegated threads. Varigated thread works twice as hard as regular thread. It carries extra colors into an area, bringing depth and interest. It blends fabric edges, making softer, smoother transitions. I have an entire set of plastic drawers filled with threads, and it is slowly being overtaken by all the different variegated threads I can find.

Three of my favorite threads are Superior, Valdani and Oliver Twist. They all do very different things. Superior’s King Tut is a lovely smooth cotton thread with short, one inch variations. I use this a lot for adding texture to larger areas, and blending pieces together. Valdani makes a wide range of thread sizes as well as color variations. I use the finer threads for increasing depth and interest – since the color changes are longer. They also make perle cotton in gorgeous variations, which I can use in the bobbin when I work from the back. Oliver Twists is a small shop that hand dyes sets of variegated threads in different weights. They are unbelievably lovely and I want ALL of them. They have more colors per strand than anything else I use. Because of the weight and interest (and cost) I use these for emphasis in visually important areas. Also I gaze at them pleasure.

Bench notes are the notes on experiments that I take to remind myself of the steps I took, and what I was thinking, and what I thought the next steps would be. These excursions start when I see a piece of artwork or a scrap of something and my head spins with ideas about how I might translate that to fabric, and whether it would be interesting if I did. This batch started with the images below.

I saw pictures from Guo Pei’s Fall 2019 collection, and I was struck by the construction of the garments. I mean, one model is straight-up wearing a bathtub filled with flowers, which has to be strenuous, while a conjoined dress for two women looks like it could sow dissension between even the best of friends. But the fabrics are amazing, the techniques bear close examination, and these two constructions made a huge impression on me:

The dress on the left, and the sleeves on the right seem to be made from hundreds of fine pieces of silk sewn vertically onto the base garment. The silhouette on the left, in particular, is created almost completely with the shape of the vertical pieces. The idea of sewing something that densely was intriguing.

To begin, I used some pieces of silk dupioni, sliced in wavy lines, and stitched onto straight vertical lines.

Color changes depending on light and orientation. I like the way the edges echo across the piece, like overlapping waves. I forgot that sewing a convex curve to a straight line made the outside edge too short, bending the base fabric. I think the silk needs to be cut more on the bias, to prevent unraveling, and also to add ease to the outside edges.

For a first test, I think I can see some ways to go on the next experiment. Next step:

• make the stitched edge straight

This makes everything lie flatter, and I miss the movement of the concave edges stitched down with the longer edges ruffling and standing off the page. When I stand the page on edge, instead of flat on the table, the shapes become more interesting.

Some possible next steps then:

• bias cut
• make the outside edges more unified – more regular
• change the weight of the silk? dupioni is fairly stiff, find something more drapey
• sew in the folded center of a piece? 2x the edges for each seam…

I’ve ordered more silk so I have more raw material to work with!