Hello everybody! When October ends, we all start the count-down for Christmas and, with the most beautiful feast of the year, we all think about the most precious and golden embrodieries: those where, probably, we put almost the half of our heart :-) But often the Christmas subjects are embellished with metallic threads: the ones that strike our eyes, just making our works more glimmering... However, these threads make us crazy, as they always twist – it seems to be their main characteristic! – they tray as simply as biscuits crumble and they are often harder than Christmas cakes in spring!
Is it too dramatic? No, it isn't :-) Do we want to be “limited” by these little obstacles??!?!?? Absolutely not!
Because there are some solutions and if you can dedicate to me only three seconds of your time, I'm happy to list them here below :-)
Let's start with a general piece of advice, which, anyway, is good also for the normal moulinés: you need to use the most short needlefuls and try to embroider by keeping the needle always in a vertical position. So, the possibilities to tray the threads are reduced a lot.
And they are reduced as well by putting a drop of this product on both the ends of the needleful of the thread:
By considering that this liquid is also perfect to avoid the tray of the fabric we are embroidering, we can say that "we can kill two birds with one stone" :-)
However, in order to “tame” the metallic threads, the most suitable option is usig this little box:
The minuscule box contains a special solid balm, which is very fine and which doesn't leave any spots neither on the most prestigious linen. It doesn't grease and you don't feel it on your fingers, but, once put on the thread you're using to embroider, it makes it more slippery, so that you forget any fray, hard fabrics and so on...
The beautiful thing is that, even if it is very little, the box doesn't finish in a short time: I'm using mine since 2006!!! Obviously, I do not always use metallic threads :-) However – and this is the good thing – if we consider that I use it also for the very delicate silk flosses, with which I embroider a lot, as I love deviating from the usual mouliné, I can guarantee that it is true to state: little investment, big gain:-)
Another important element to consider is the metallic thread per se. With the current, always growing, offer of metallic threads, the choice can be a bit difficult. Without getting into particular details and without considering personal tastes - everybody likes different things- I just state that it is really worthed once in our "embroidery life" to try something different from the DMC :-) And not because the metallic threads by the famous French company are of bad quality. Of course, not, they are very good as all their products are but... There are some alternatives and they are valid as well :-) Starting from the bobbins by Kreinik:
Available in different dimensions and colors of 65 different tones, these metallic threads are the most sold in the USA, but they have also conquered a large slice of the Old Continent's market! Why? Simply because they are extraordinarly brilliant and soft and, thanks to the different thicknesses proposed, they can apply to different embroideries. To see in detail the differences among the several Kreinik, I will talk about them in a future post because there are a lot to things to say :-)
Before ending, I just give you a fantastic metallic alternative, which is far from the classic problems of twisting. I'm talking about the threads by Rainbow Gallery, that you can see here:
As you can see, even in this case, the tones and the consistencies available are a lot and, even in this case, next time I will describe you all the several differencies in detail :-)
A big hug and... Happy Stitching!
