Standing in my French inspired kitchen, I was thinking about the toile quilt I was in the process of making. The pie safe in the middle of the kitchen is green, and it occurred to me that the toile would make a perfect addition to the décor. After all, toile is a French word meaning ‘linen cloth’, so it fit the theme. Toile has been traced back to the middle ages in Europe, and since the 1700s has been used to describe a fabric with some kind of scene repeated over the fabric in a single color most often black, red or blue.
Thinking about it further, I decided that I would use the blocks I had to create not one lap quilt, but three table toppers to use in the kitchen and dining room. This gave me an opportunity to look at the difference a choice of thread color could make in the finished design. I added dark green borders to all of the toppers.
I divided the blocks into the three toppers depending on the size I needed for the space and constructed the tops. I loaded a single backing to quilt all of them, along with the two candle mats from the borders tutorial. All three toppers got the exact same pantograph leaf pattern.
I tend to use dark threads for quilting as I like the quilting to show most in the background spaces and disappear in the block design. Most of the time this works well, but I wanted to see what might happen with other values. On one I used a dark green thread, one got a neutral light brown, and one got a variegated green.
The dark green shows the quilting well on the background, but it tended to obscure the delicate print of the toile. I like it on the dark green flying geese, but overall wasn’t the best choice for this quilt.
Next, I tried the light brown, matching the triangles in the quilt. This faded back and lets the toile show better. It shows up more on the border and in the dark green flying geese, but this is a bit more pleasing because of the toile prints.
Lastly, I tried the medium to light green variegated, with a solid neutral in the bobbin. This was a good choice too, as it didn’t overpower the toile, yet it is subtle in the border and blocks.
So, think about what you want the quilting to do, where you want it to show and where you want it to fade back when selecting your quilting thread color. There is not one correct answer, the choice is always up to you and what you like. For delicate prints, matching the background color will recede to the background better than a strong color. Darker colors will show nicely on light backgrounds and disappear in darker block fabrics. Either way, have fun and happy quilting!