Today, I’m excited to introduce Aurifilosopher Kate Toney of Tough Kitten Crafts! Aurifil has had the pleasure of working with Kate as an Artisan and we were thrilled when she joined the Aurifilosophy team. I have so much love and respect for Kate’s quest to make machine embroidery accessible for all, particularly with 100% Cotton Aurifil threads. I love seeing each new project that she creates and have thoroughly enjoyed her IG videos throughout this year! HUGE thanks to Kate for sharing some of her creative insight with us here today!
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Happy Stitching!
— Karen L. Miller
Hi! I’m Kate of Tough Kitten Crafts and I empower sewists to grow from frustrated to fearless with machine embroidery through online education and a supportive community. I also have the immense privilege of being an Aurifilosopher, meaning that I get to share my love of Aurifil thread with shops and guilds all over the United States.
One of my favorite things to do with machine embroidery is to play around with different thread weights. I especially love teaching this technique! Machine embroidery can be intimidating enough as it is, but throwing in thick threads? Mixing different thread weights in a design? That can all feel like too much! But… I promise you it’s easy to do and it’s really fun to release your creativity in this way.
In today’s Thread Matters post, I am going to do a breakdown of 4 thread weights by showing you how they look stitched out in various designs and telling you how you can duplicate my results at home. I have even provided the designs as a free download, so you can make your own thread weight samples, but more on that in a minute.
For each embroidery sample I have done 5 different designs:
- Box A (left) is a square that is digitized to be half as dense as typical embroidery fills. You will find this type of stitching in some “light stitching” designs and “thick thread” designs.
- Box B (right) is your typical embroidery density for a filled shape.
- Single Stitch is the innermost rectangle to show off how the thread stitches in a normal, single stitch (though it’s not super common in machine embroidery designs)
- Triple Stitch is next. This is common in machine embroidery– especially in quilting, redwork, and linework designs.
- Finally, the Blanket Stitch. You don’t actually see this stitch often in machine embroidery but I love it and how it shows off the thread weights in both machine embroidery and regular sewing.
All four samples were stitched with 50wt Aurifil in the bobbin and a 90/14 Topstitch needle. The fabric is a canvas, stabilized with 1 layer of OESD fusible woven and one layer OESD Medium Weight Cutaway to ensure it looks great on camera. I hooped these designs in two separate hoopings using the standard hooping method. If you’d like to learn more about different hooping methods click on the button below for my instructional blog post.
Want to stitch out these embroidery swatches for yourself? I would love that so much! Click on the button below for more information on how to try out embroidery with each weight for yourself.
This is how my finished samples turned out, all sewn together. They look awesome don’t they? Let’s break down how to successfully use each thread weight and how each one differs.
12 Weight Thread
The 12wt samples look really good at first glance but I want you to notice some things about the boxes. Box A (to the left) is the box that has been digitized to be ½ as dense as typical embroidery and because of that, the 12wt thread has space to lay flat. Box B was digitized at the typical density for machine embroidery and while it stitched out fine with no issues during stitching, we can see that it caused some puckering and even distorted the fill pattern in the box. If you could feel it, you would notice box B is thick and even slightly raised from too many stitches in one area with such a thick thread. All in all, box A looks much better with the thickness of the 12wt thread.
Our single stitch and triple stitches both look fantastic– 12wt really shines in running stitches. Both running stitches have a hand done look from the 12 weight, even more so on the single straight stitch where the straight stitch looks a little shaky. You could avoid this by making your stitches longer. The blanket stitch is okay but you can see that we get little “V”s sometimes, something you’d need to watch out for as you stitch.
All in all, triple stitch designs and designs with less stitching will be best when working with 12wt thread.
Needle size: 90/14 or 100/16
Needle type: Topstitch
Bobbin Weight: 40wt or 50wt. Don’t use a “Bobbin weight thread” as it is too thin and will exacerbate potential tension issues.
Best types of designs for this weight thread: Open, airy designs. Sashiko, quilting, and redwork designs all work well. “Thick Thread” Designs.
Design types to avoid: Anything dense with a lot of satin and/or fill stitches.
Benefits of stitching with 12wt thread: 12wt thread is fantastic for creating beautiful texture and visual interest in your designs. It will help you mimic a hand stitched look with your embroidery machine.
Notes about stitching in this weight:
– Turn off your thread cutter
– May want to stitch slow
– I had no issue stitching out box B, which is a typical density of machine embroidery.
– Join my 12 Weight Workshop for more details on stitching with this thread weight.
28 Weight Thread
I was so happy with how the 28wt sample turned out! This gorgeous thread weight really performed beautifully in every sample. Box A, with the lighter stitching, shows off the fill design really well while keeping a light look to the design. Box B, with the typical stitching, looks more dense than thread normally would in this design; it still looks great and has a nice thick density that likely wouldn’t cause any issues with a stitch out.
Running stitches done with 28wt look fantastic — perhaps due to the added thickness. There were some issues with the blanket stitch that could be avoided by adjusting the tension. Altogether, I am so excited to use 28wt thread more! It looks great.
This stellar whale was machine embroidered with 28wt thread. I then put the design in a hand embroidery hoop and started to embellish swirling clouds onto the piece with Aurifloss by hand.
Needle size: 90/14. May be able to stitch with 80/12, though I stick with 90/14 to avoid issue.
Needle type: Topstitch
Bobbin Weight: 40wt or 50wt. Don’t use a “bobbin weight thread” as it is too thin and will exacerbate potential tension issues.
Best types of designs for this weight thread: “Light Stitching” designs show off the thread best, with open, airy fills. Can handle “regular” designs okay but will require a test stitch out to ensure density isn’t an issue.
Design types to avoid: Anything dense with a lot of stitching on top of other dense areas.
Benefits of stitching with 28wt thread: 28wt is less finicky than 12wt, but will still give more dimension to machine embroidered designs than embroidery weight threads.
Notes about stitching in this weight:
– Turn off your thread cutter
40 Weight Thread
40wt thread is the standard for machine embroidery and it performs incredibly well in this sample. Box A looks beautiful and airy with its light stitching and Box B looks perfectly filled in. Our running stitches and blanket stitch also look perfect. This was easy and since it’s the standard there is not much to say about this sample because truly, it all looks good.
These freestanding lace earrings are made entirely of thread! Embroidering freestanding lace with cotton 40wt is so easy and is a fun new way to show off your Aurifil thread collection.
Needle size: 75/11 or 80/12
Needle type: Any. I use embroidery needles most often.
Bobbin Weight: 40wt or a bobbin weight thread like Aurifil 80wt.
Best types of designs for this weight thread: Pretty much everything! This is the embroidery standard so enjoy!
Design types to avoid: Only thick thread designs or designs that specifically state they were digitized with another thread weight in mind.
Benefits of stitching with 40wt thread: It’s easy! It’s the standard weight and it does not require any special accommodations.
Notes about stitching in this weight:
– Try a bobbin weight thread
– Have fun trying out different needle types and sizes. My favorite is the 75/11 embroidery needle.
50 Weight Thread
This was my favorite sample of the whole project because it really opened my eyes to the differences between 40wt and 50wt. I use the two interchangeably and while they are very similar, this proves that 50wt truly is more delicate and should be used wisely.
Box A is very sparsely stitched and even box B is reading as open and airy, despite being more densely digitized, especially when we compare it to 40wt. This is great to know because it may affect the ways in which you choose to use 50wt thread in your embroidered designs.
The pillow above was stitched with 50wt thread in my favorite thread color, 2311. The different thicknesses and texture you are seeing here is all down to the different stitches, not different thread weights.
Needle size: 75/11 or 80/12
Needle type: Any. I use embroidery needles most often.
Bobbin Weight: 50wt or a bobbin weight thread like Aurifil 80wt.
Best types of designs for this weight thread: Pretty much everything! It’s so close to 40wt.
Design types to avoid: Only thick thread designs or designs that specifically state they were digitized with another thread weight in mind.
Benefits of stitching with 50wt thread: It’s easy and it does not require any special accommodations. The best part is that you can use all that great 50wt you already own!
Notes about stitching in this weight:
– Try a bobbin weight thread for best results
– Have fun trying out different needle types and sizes. My favorite is 75/11 embroidery needle.
I’m excited for you to stitch out your own thread samples like the ones I made in this post. Check out my blog post via the button below for more instructions on how I stitched out these designs and for your free download of the thread sample design.
Ready to learn more about machine embroidery? My comprehensive machine embroidery class– Foundations of Machine Embroidery— is enrolling again in just a few days and I am so excited to have you be a part of it! This course has not only helped hundreds of students become confident machine embroiderers but has also helped these sewists fall in love with machine embroidery!
I teach you using my unique 4 Weeks to Fearless Framework that helps you build foundational knowledge before getting hands on, to ensure you understand machine embroidery from the foundations up.
Learn more about Foundations of Machine Embroidery by clicking on the button below. I can’t wait to get to know you and to help you learn machine embroidery better than you ever thought possible!
HUGE thanks to Kate for dropping some amazing machine embroidery knowledge! Looking to put some of these ideas to practice? Shop multi-weight collections via the button below!
ABOUT KATE
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Kate Toney is a Florida based Aurifil Artisan, BERNINA event team member, & machine embroidery specialist who loves all things sewing and DIY. Kate maintains her own blog called Tough Kitten Crafts where she teaches machine embroidery and BERNINA machines. Kate has been working with BERNINA in-store or as an event team member for 5 years now and loves to help sewists better understand their machines. In her free time Kate loves to spend her days at Disney with her boyfriend, Brad, or snuggled on the couch with her pets while she plays Animal Crossing or knits while watching Netflix.