Cotton Floss in Color Palettes – New from Sublime Stitching!

This week – today, in fact – Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching is announcing her new cotton embroidery floss, available in color palettes!

This week, I got to play with the new floss from Sublime Stitching and to chuckle a bit over the fun color palettes.

They are a lot of fun!

Jenny is releasing seven color palettes and two “specialty” thread collections. Each collection of floss features seven pull skeins that are similar to DMC and other stranded cotton floss.

The collections are individually named to reflect the colors in the palette. The one above, for example, is called “Parlour,” its dark burgundy and deep red and gold evoking a Victorian-like parlor.

Unlike most stranded cotton floss, these skeins each have a name evocative of the color and the palette to which it belongs. For example, the gold above is called “bell pull.”

On each skein, one of the tags has a little one-liner on it, connected to the color name. On “bell pull,” the one liner is “Jeeves to the drawing room.”

Now, I’ve always thought it would be Great Fun to name embroidery floss colors! But I imagine that, once you get a bit saturated (no pun intended!), it becomes more and more challenging to come up with names that evoke the colors. The whole idea of colors, names, emotions, places, feelings they evoke – I find it fascinating. But I don’t know if I could actually do it! To throw in a snippet of text that relates to the name and the color in a witty way – it’s fun and clever! Needless to say, once I noticed the snippets, I went through and read every little label!

Here’s another example from the Parlour palette: Fainting Couch. It’s a deep purplish burgundy, very velvety and rich.

The quip? Bring the smelling salts!

Not only do you get fun colors grouped together, but you get a touch of wit with each! How many thread manufacturers do that, eh?!

This palette is “Portrait” – the colors evoke an old-fashioned portrait.

This is “Flowerbox” – it’s my favorite of all the palettes. I played with this palette, just to work with the floss a little bit.

I didn’t really plan anything here – it’s random doodling with needle and thread, with the whole six strands in the needle, using chain stitch, daisy stitch (detached chain), straight stitches, and French knots.

The thread works up just like DMC. It is sturdy, I had no strange difficulties with it. It felt like mercerized, stranded cotton floss, which is exactly what it is!

The threads were tested for colorfastness (i.e. they were tested against the color running when wet), and Jenny said they all passed, including the darker, rich colors.

From my own point of views, I’d offer this advice, though, when working with cotton floss that you plan to wash: If you’re stitching something you will launder – like a flour sack towel, clothing, and the like – you should always launder with cool water. You can often get away with warm… but why test fate? Cool water is a much safer bet against the dye running, and the threads won’t fade as fast if you launder them in cooler water and avoid hot settings on the dryer and dying in direct sunlight. After regular laundering, the colors will fade a little bit (I haven’t met a cotton floss that doesn’t fade when repeatedly laundered, unless great care is taken, the items are hand washed, and so forth). Light will also affect embroidery floss. Don’t confuse “colorfastness” with fade-resistance or lightfastness.

This garishly bright, electric palette is called… “Breakdance.” (What else?) I would comment about my memories of my ’80’s youth… but I think I’ll skip it!

Fruit Salad, anyone? A very tropical grouping!

Here we have Frosting – a collection of paler, softer colors. I’ll take buttercream, please… oh, yum.

This deep, rich collection is called Prism. Very jewel-toney.

And finally, the two special groups. This collection is called Taffy Pull – it’s a selection of variegated floss…

… and this striped group is called “Mingles.” Each skein is made up of 3 strands of one color mingled with 3 strands of another. The thread on the far left (the black and white) is called “Dalmatian,” incidentally!

With the Mingles group, the threads can be used all six strands at a time in the needle, apparently without “stripping” the floss (separating each strand and putting them back together, which gives a smoother result when stitching).

I played with the brown Mingles a little bit – it would make good baskets with weaving or lattice stitches, bark on trees, animal coats and the like.

Personally, I don’t often embroider with all six strands in the needle, but it can be a fun way to make a bold statement with stitches, and it’s especially a good way to teach children and beginners who just want to do simple embroidery for fun!

I think Sublime Stitching’s color palettes are a good idea and a lot of fun! I’m not sure where they will be released or where you’ll be able to find them, but I’m pretty certain the news will be all over the Sublime Stitching blog today, so if you want to dabble with some fun color palettes of cotton floss, hop over there and take a look!

Later in the Morning Addition: Actually, you can find the new color palette floss collections right on the Sublime Stitching website.

This is a completely unaffiliated review! Jenny sent the threads out for testing, without any expectation of blog coverage. So, while I did receive a free package of threads, no one twisted my arm to write today’s article. I think the thread palettes are clever and fun! And anything that works to get youth, crafters, newbies, and anyone else into embroidery – hey, I’m all for it!