At 08:50 PM 6/15/03 -0500, Sue Babbs wrote: > I've heard that too, and the Gutermann's I've seen recently > doesn't have the same sheen to it as the thread which I was > buying in England, when Sandi published her book. What > I've found recently is a matte silk, which is not as pretty > to my mind.
Though there isn't a hint of a clue on the spool, Guetermann's "silk" thread is no longer sewing silk -- it's spun silk, which is an entirely different fiber even though it comes from the same cocoons. (Sewing silk is reeled off the cocoons -- to make spun silk, they chop the cocoons to fluff and spin it like cotton.) Spun silk is much weaker than reeled silk. I can think of only two uses for the current Guetermann silk: as a substitute for cotton when you want decorative stitching that isn't shiny, or seams that aren't stronger than the fabric, in a thread that requires the same cleaning methods as wool. I've found a web site that sells real reeled sewing silk < http://www.silkthings.com/threadsindex.asp >, but I still have plenty of Belding Cortecelli sewing silk, so I haven't bought anything from them yet. -- Joy Beeson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where it is early summer. - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED]
