Every quilter knows the moment… the quilt top is finished, the sandwich is basted, and you’re staring at a wall of thread, wondering how one particular spool will look once it sinks into the fabric. Will it blend or pop? Will it look right on the deep black but disappear on the gold?
Eva Saunders (Gingerly Quilt Co.), who both organized the Grimoire Sampler AND designed one of the 13 blocks, has a way to take the guesswork out of that moment. She calls it a thread piano, and it might be the most useful thing you can make before you start quilting.
What is a thread piano?
When Eva is working on a big project like the Grimoire, she makes a long, narrow test piece she calls a thread piano. She takes blocks of every fabric in the quilt and stitches them together into one long “noodle,” then adds the same type of batting and backing that she used on for the quilt. Next she stitches from one end to the other, so each thread crosses every fabric in the line-up. Each thread gets two lines of stitching at two different stitch lengths. That means she can see how every thread looks on every fabric, and how stitch length changes the look.
The detail that makes it work is that the sandwich is built exactly like her actual quilt, with the same batting, backing, and layering. The test stitches sink into the fabric the way the real quilting will, so what she sees on the piano is what she’ll get on the quilt. She can look at the piano and make informed choices about which thread goes where.
The Companion Palette: colors chosen for the quilt
The Grimoire Companion Palette wasn’t pulled together at random. Eva chose each of its eight colors to coordinate with the solids in her own version of the quilt, using the fabrics listed in the pattern’s supplies. (You’re welcome to choose your own fabrics, of course. The palette is a starting point, and a thread piano is a good way to see how it plays with whatever you pick.)
She went with Cotton 40wt for seven of the eight spools because she knew where these threads were headed: the quilting. Cotton 40wt is a quilting go-to, and it gives clean, even stitches that sit nicely in the fabric. The eighth spool is a Cotton 28wt, added to keep the option of quilting with extra definition, for those spots where you want the stitches to pop.
Here’s what’s in the palette:
- Cotton 40wt 2902, Light Laurel Green
- Cotton 40wt 2132, Tarnished Gold
- Cotton 40wt 2975, Brass
- Cotton 40wt 2230, Red Peony
- Cotton 40wt 2890, Very Dark Grass Green
- Cotton 40wt 1126, Blue Grey
- Cotton 40wt 4241, Very Dark Grey
- Cotton 28wt 5012, Dark Green
Testing every thread on every fabric
This is where the thread piano comes in. For the Grimoire, Eva made hers with the 12 AGF solids from the pattern’s supplies list, including Golden Bronze and Deep Black, and stitched every thread in the palette across all of them. Each thread got two lines of stitching, one at a 2.5 stitch length and one at 3.0, so she could compare how each color looks on each fabric and how the stitch length changes the effect. Because the piano uses the same fabrics as the quilt, what you see on it is what you’ll see on your blocks.
A thread piano works for any project where you’re choosing thread from a palette, not just the Grimoire. Gather scraps of every fabric in your quilt, stitch them into a strip, layer it up the same way you’ll layer the quilt, and test your threads. A little time up front saves you from unpicking later.
Join the Grimoire
Eva’s thread piano is one more way the Grimoire makes this project easier to enjoy. The pattern has 13 blocks from 13 magical designers, and the Companion Palette keeps your thread choices simple from the first block to the last. If you’re stitching along this October, we’d love to see how your own quilting turns out.