Thread – for our purposes – a long, thin strand of cotton, nylon or other fibres used in sewing or weaving.
Thread – it's wonderful stuff, isn't it? So many different kinds, so tactile, all those wonderful colours, so absolutely gorgeous! It glows, gleams, shimmers and shines. It can feel so silky, soft or strong and utilitarian or even harsh and uncomfortable for rougher uses. It never fails to amaze me how even a very soft, fine thread can be so relatively strong.
There are a lot of rabbit holes about thread everywhere, and they are fascinating. Whole books, which, of course, I'm not going to do here! I just want to tell you how amazing I think this basic material and tool of sewing and its history is.
The earliest sewing threads appear to have been thin strips of animal hide, possibly also any kind of plant fibres, supple and strong enough to be used. The early Egyptians were certainly adept at making thread from plant fibres and from wool and other animal hairs. Thread was handspun using a spindle, a technique still available to us today although mostly used for artwork. We do now have more efficient methods for producing our everyday threads!
Embroidery was around between 1600 – 1100 BCE with the Assyrians and Babylonians and by around 350 BCE, the Chinese and Japanese had discovered the techniques and beauty of silk.
Humans being inventive and curious continued to improve and develop new materials in thread. The Middle Ages brought improvements in wool production and processing and shipping and the opening of the Silk Road to Asia, paving the way for the growth of woven tapestries and needlework. Linen, cotton, silk and silver and gold threads became part of these works – their use flowed through to seamstresses and needleworkers in smaller and finer works and threads.
(Images from Wikipedia, Google images and Pinterest)
Machine production of thread, initially cotton, began in the Industrial Revolution in England in 1730, generating more uniform thread with fewer flaws. Stronger threads with truer dye colours and the development of a wider variety of threads for different uses has led to the absolute plethora of threads we now enjoy and use for all types of thread and yarn based activities.
Now made from all manner of natural and synthetic materials, threads are something I take great delight in. I hope you can too and you've enjoyed following my thread on thread!
By the way, did you know that the people who create new threads are called seam engineers?
We do have lots of thread available in our Misty Threads shop. We don't post it on our site for technical reasons; however, please contact us directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for your thread requirements, be it regular sewing thread or specialty threads, including embroidery threads, and we can either add it to a larger order or apply exact postage. At the moment, our stock includes both Scanfil and Rasant, well-priced, good quality threads for all general sewing requirements, Gutermann organic threads and invisible threads. Specialty threads include DMC stranded and perle #8 embroidery threads, Signature #40 variegated threads, Mettler machine variegated threads, silk threads and a few other various specialty threads.
Hope you continue to enjoy your own thread journey!
Take care
Meg