How to build your thread collection

Do you collect thread?

I certainly do. Have accumulated a lot of thread over the years until I decided to only use Aurifil thread for my FMQ. This thread is hard to come by over here and for this reason I have purchased 2 thread collection boxes, i.e. the Sheena Norquay collection and Mark Lipinski's Allrounder as well as individual spools that were needed at the time.

These thread collection boxes are good, however I wish I could build my own thread collection box. Having quilted for a while, I now know exactly what I would need and what is most useful.

Here it is...Karin's thread collection (with a few added individual tones)

I would need a threadbox that incorporates both Aurifil Mako 50/2 and 40/3 as I sometimes want to emphasize certain areas of quilting. In terms of purchasing the boxes you however need to take one or the other which I have found a bit limiting, so giving my avid FMQ I have purchased the 50/2 thread.

The colours you see above are the ones that I most frequently use:
gold type colour: goes with lots of quilts if you like me do lots of country type coloured quilts. Also is a nice accent colour if you like hyperquilting in feathers.

light green: am on my third spool with that...use this all the time and this is the one where I realized that I need the 40/3 thread (with the green cap) as well.

surprising pink: I am not a pink person at all but this pink has been most useful in quilting anything with a dark red fabric (as I often do).

blue tones: my new favourite
varigated: one spool of variegated thread for allover designs. The one I have there probably has too much green so I would look probably for a slightly toned down version

So, here is my box:
White 50/2: for baby quilts
Off white 50/2: for all other quilts

Taupe/Sandy thread 50/2: when you really want to blend in your thread for a multi-coloured quilt.

Gold 50/2 and 40/3
Light-green 50/2 and 40/3
Dark Pink 50/2 and 40/3
Blueish tones 50/2 and 40/3
Variegated thread 40/3

Exactly 12 spools...I am on a winner here. Once your box is done, then you can add to it as I certainly have done with different individual spools of different tones (see above the red-brownish tone added to the gold) for individual projects.

On the Aurifil's website they are talking about Customized collections coming soon...not sure whether this applies to individual customers...maybe that would be too labour intensive. Would be good though.

Anyway, back to some quilting...

Karin