I love cross stitch, because it allows me to play with color and texture, and to put my personal stamp on a mass-produced chart - through the design elements and the background. I do this by changing colors, adding specialty stitches, but mostly by using specialty-dyed fabrics and threads. In fact, I use them on nearly every project now. Except for DMC-to-Anchor, I do all my own thread-to-thread conversions, and don’t rely on printed lists. After lots of trial (and some error), I've found that my favorite special-dyed-thread brands are Vikki Clayton's Hand Dyed Fibers silks (HDF), Needle Necessities cottons (NN), and Anchor space-dyed & variegated cottons. However, I've used most other well-known brands, except Thread Gatherer (TG), Six Strand Sweets (SSS), Dinky-Dyes, Dragon Threads, Soy-Luster, NN's dyed metallics, and Northern Lights silks by Needlepoint, Inc (NPI).
For anyone not familiar with them, here are the basic types of threads we lump into the category of "variegated or over-dyed fibers". True Variegated fibers are factory-dyed in 1 color that ranges from light to dark in a regular pattern along the thread. Space dyed are factory-dyed fibers with multiple colors dyed in a regular pattern along the thread. Anchor and DMC both make these kinds of threads. The following types of dyed threads are generally colored by hand-dyers, using factory-spun base fibers from DMC, Anchor, Kreinik metallics, imported silks, etc.
Hand-dyed threads are simply that - threads dyed by hand in small batches, using one or more colors. Some are very "blotchy" or irregular in color, others are nearly solid. A few brands are light+color-fast, but most are not. Over-dyed threads are dyed in a base color, then dyed again in irregular patches, using 1 or more additional colors. Liquid and/or crystal dyes may be used for over-dyeing. Shadow-dyed threads can be natural or have 1 or more base colors. The base is then muted by patches of a darker sheer color which appears to "shadow" the colors beneath. Needle Necessities is famous for this technique. Poly-chrome threads, just mean "many colors", and can be used to describe space-dyed threads done by hand or machine.
These are my favorite projects using specialty-dyed threads:
- 2004 Finishes - Contest Sampler in HDF silks and Accentuate metallics on Silkweaver hand-dyed Aida, Both border studies use Gentle Art Sampler Thread (GAST) with Accentuate metallics.
- 2005 Finishes - Starflower in Anchor space-dyed & regular cotton, Border Study in Needle Necessities (NN) and Accentuate metallics on Lakeside Linens (LL) hand-dyed fabric, and Jubilee Rose in HDF silks.
- WIP's (works in progress) - Patchwork in HDF poly-chrome/variegated colors, Flutterbyes in HDF silks & Anchor solids, Starflower in Anchor space-dyed and solid colors.
- Sajou RR (round robin)- Threads are hand-dyed and poly-chrome silks by HDF on SilkWeaver fabric. Closeup pics show the mottled color play the best. My previous RR with this same group (Flying Quaker on my Webshots) also uses HDF silks and Silkweaver fabric. I left it off this list, because these threads photographed as solid colors rather than the mottled hand-dyed colors they really are.
Yummy Watermelon designed and stitched by Connie G. Barwick.
