It does not matter as much as it used to - - -
 

When I first started piecing - which I do more of, than actual quilting -

I thought the piecing thread had to match the right side of the fabric as closely as possible. Not so much anymore. I won't use black on white - but I will use almost any medium with another medium color.

Matchy, matchy - after reading Jinny Beyer's book about color - "Color Confidence for Quilters" - I've learned that "bridging" the colors in the focus fabric is much more interesting than matching each color exactly.

Also - the overall "color" of a piece of fabric can look different from 15 feet away than it does ten inches away from my eyes.

The actual instructions may or may not be correct. I've learned that if they seem wrong - they probably are. So "authority" does not matter as much as it used to.

Matching intersections and pointy points are still important - but if after three tries, I'm still 1/8 of a inch off - I've learned to tolerate it. Not comfortable - but let's get this thing done!

What you think of what I think is important in the process - I am willing to listen - but -

How about you?

That is interesting. I guess I agree?
For the color, I do not use a color wheel and go by how it looks to me. On the old What Not to Wear they used to say "It doesn't have to match, it just has to "go" That was about clothes but, I still think it applies.
I use all kinds of threads for piecing even black and white depending on what I am making.
I still do my best to match intersections and keep points. Mostly okay and then I think when it is quilted and washed, then no one even me will see.
I love to FMQ. I am not the most proficient but am "supremely adequate" as a friend used to say about things. And when I look at beautiful FMQ whether by sewing machine or long arm, I love it, and love to do it on my Brother PQ1500, and only other quilters seem to appreciate it. I have never given a quilt where the recipient says "that is beautiful quilting - how did you do the feathers?". They say "I love the colors". But I still love doing it. Nothing goes in a show.

I have been dabbling in quilting since 2000ish. My tolerance fro somethings have has increased while for a few other things and become non existent!

I agree with your thread comments!! When I was sewing clothing - the thread was always matched - quilting? - Cream Aurifil on 99%. Black, Navy and other dark fabrics get dark gray/black/navy thread but only when paired with another dark fabric.

Instructions?? Is that something that one uses? lol. I often will glance over a pattern and decide I do not like how it is done and will go my own way. Often I am successful but occasionally I regret my decision. Oh - and if there are too many HSTs I have been known to re-design the pattern or draw the block in EQ and paper piece it!

I do have a confession - I am a stickler on seam intersections, directional fabric and points on anything I make. Matter of fact I wish I could get over this - I sometimes feel that I am a bit obsessive about these but I can not seem to let them go lol. I got tagged to put together the Guild quilt this year for this reason. Members made the blocks and they were brought to me. Several had to be creatively modified on the fly because I was loosing too many points but.the result was a stunning quilt. Directional fabric for me has to be either 100% in one direction or 50/50.

I have always made color decisions from at least 15 feet away from the fabrics. This has led to some very questionable looks from guild members who see the fabric up close but when I display it at show and tell they can't believe it's the same quilt. I don't let small mistakes get me down like I use to. I thought everyone was looking at the mistake. I found out they weren't and also they didn't care or know enough to call it a mistake. I get so much peace from every part of the quilt process and that is all that is important enough to keep perfect.

I stopped matching thread to fabric in quilting when I started going scrappy, there simply was no way I could match. Now I am typically threaded with a steely blue/grey and light beige/camel. I use the two different colors so I can more easily see the stitches if I am looking for them, both both blend into other fabrics. If I'm doing darks, like say black and dark batiks, I will use up what I have left of dark threads -- Oh, look over there, enough of that hunter green to wind a bobbin, let's go!

For the quilting thread, the traditionalist in me fought for a long time that the only proper color was white. Now, I'm like what the heck? You want to show off the quilting use (complementary) fuchsia thread on aqua cloth and go for it! Maybe not me so much but I will at least consider it :)

I think one thing my vision lost has taught me is the value of contrast. Not just in colors or in values, but also scale of fabrics. Again, my inner traditionalist self loves tiny vine-y calicos, but they all blur into one another without some solid or stripes or large prints. Blur is good when you are doing watercolors or low value, but not so much when you want those lovely pieced points to show off.

It (the vision loss) has also taught me to appreciate some looser construction methods, like the slice and dice crazy project I'm currently working on. I do my best to keep points sharp and such, mostly by cutting the fabric large and trimming down the subunits to perfect size.

Likewise, in reality we are too close to our projects. We need to step back from that 6-inches away inspection to a couple of feet. And of course, on a galloping horse if needed.

I so much agree with you Bear. Most of my piecing is now done with whatever color is on the machine. The one issue I have is that I will never sew black fabric with black thread, anything bar whites or yellow. or using dark colors on light fabrics. Am rather fussy about points, don't like to loose them.
I haven't sewn a stitch for 18 months due to health problems, and seem to have lost interest. Hopefully that will change now Spring has arrived here.

Is that why I have so many different colours of thread in my bin? I've been buying 2000m spools of Mettler cotton in a light taupe and seldom use anything else, except black. I did buy some white thread recently but it wasn't really necessary. If I ever take up hand applique, I have plenty of colour matchy thread to use.

The more I piece, the better my seams become and the less trimming my blocks need. I love it when blocks just sit together nicely. My method has been to make things larger and trim down but I'm doing that less and less. I have been working on my pressing technique and have found that using a clapper and really flattening down the seams is making a huge difference in accuracy.

Thread - as my eyes age, my vision requires the ability to actually see the thread on the fabric as I sew. I use a medium color in the top thread and a white in the bobbin, or vice versa. It doesn't seem to hurt the quilt.

I agree with all your “points” Bear. I have a nice stash of threads but mostly only use them for quilting. For piecing I use a light grey or off white. Sewing the same seam three times is my limit. If it still looks off after that, it was meant to look off and I let it. I’m still an accountant and I still like precision, but some fights aren’t worth the time.

One thing that still aggravates me is the trends in quilting. I’m always way behind. When I first joined this board in 2009 or so, EVERYBODY was making this particular kind of bag (the name escapes me but those that have been here a while will remind me). Not my thing, so I didn’t participate. Then the Swoon quilt was all the rage about 2011 or 2012. I just finished my first Swoon a few months ago. At some point more recently the Beth Dutton quilt was everywhere. I still would like to make that one but haven’t worked it into the schedule yet. I guess I just need more time for quilting. But since I have a 12-year-old in the house I won’t be retiring any time soon.

Just went and found a post. It was the Bow Tuck bag!

I had to google Beth Dutton Quilt! I guess I am really not up to date on trends. Not really a follower. I am more...out of the box. The process that does not matter much to me is mitered corners. I just Get-R-Done! Actually, not much matters to me, as long as I am satisfied. I do like my quilts to be squared! My first kaleidoscope quilt ended up unsquared, off kilter. Well, when I drew it on graph paper, it was not squared! So, yeah, I redesigned it.
Binding- is new to me because I used to extend the top layer in order to fold to the back and stitch as binding. Now that I create binding strips, I am ok with the backside not being perfect, as long as the quilt is bound.

For piecing I still use more off white than anything else because the majority of my fabric is light to medium color. Still, I have spools of camel, tan, beige, lt. blue, pink and gray that are used mostly for the actual quilting. If my adjoining seams are off a 1/16" or 1/8" I will try to adjust that only once. I'm far from perfect, and believe that every quilt should have a small mistake in it somewhere. The thing that bothers me is not back stitching at the end of a seam and then have it pull apart when the block is trimmed. Can't tell you how much time I spent on my latest quilt repairing pulled apart seams.
Oh, and I'm never up on the latest patterns and stay far away from those that seems complicated to me as my brain just won't wrap around those. The most current pattern from a couple years ago was the potato chip quilt and I did use scraps to make one, but have yet to quilt it.

I agree, Bear. Lots of things that used to seem to important to me, now aren't.

I used gray, taupe, off white or whatever for piecing. I recently found some off white aurifil on sale so that will probably be my piecing thread.

In my younger days, I used to "match" fabric by standing on the table and pulling fabrics from the boxes on shelves on the wall and dropping it on the table or floor. I found that fabrics look different from even 5' away. Since that's how most people see things, it works well. Now I also use my camera to see things from far away.

I'm also don't feel that following instructions is that important. I learned when I did a lot of garments that there are often better ways to accomplish the same thing than the instructions. But then, as I've gotten older, I've found that I feel much freer to do things my way than the "right" way.

As far as matching intersections and points, I'm good with being close. Exact doesn't always matter, but the intersections have to be close. I don't like points getting cut off, but have ignored a tiny bit on occasion.

I've never thought about matching thread when piecing. If it's mostly dark fabrics, I'll go with a dark grey or black. If it's mostly light fabrics, I'll go with a cream or white. Then my go to thread is a medium grey thread.

For quilting as I don't consider myself an expert or if my tension will always be perfect, I'll use the same color thread on top and bottom. I tend to like seeing the patterns on the back side in the various colors anyway and I feel it adds character to the backside as well as the front side. Right now I'm using 4 different threads on this Alliitaire quilt top I'm custom quilting for my sister as she decided she wanted it once she saw it so many years ago when I made it. She's loving that she can see the various thread colors on the backside. Yes, I know this quilt top was made say 10 years ago and I'm just finally getting around to quilting it. THink it's the oldest UFO I have hanging around too so I am making headway on my UFOs.

Re thread: My preference is Aurifil. I have several spools of a sort of peachy tan that i got on clearance a few years ago. Still strong, no problem there. But the color... While I used to love CW and darker fabrics, I've shifted to brighter, more vibrant colors - so this thread has languished.

The cones I got last summer at $34 are now $48, and I just found that Aurifil will raise their prices 25% in October. Yikes! I think I'm going to bite the bullet and just use the color I have. Rarely does stitching show. Gylene Fitzgerald said, in a class I took, that people used to have black and white thread, and they used those two colors for everything. I need to use the peachy tan.

My neighbor bought a box of stuff at auction. In it was a box of 12 spools of Aurifil thread. All bright red. He gave it to me. I used it for piecing everything but pale or white fabric. Couldn't see the red thread at all once sewn. It was rather fun to sit down to a bright red spool of thread on the machine. I was told never to piece black with black thread. Use a dark green or brown so the stiches can be seen to be picked out if needed.

I inherited a stash oh, 20 plus years ago. Lots of thread because the quilter used different colors in her marvelous quilts. During COVID, I just started grabbing thread and using it to clean out the "thread stash". It worked, I emptied many, many spools. I filled a two quart mason jar with spools in double quick time. Now, I have slowed down on the number of quilts I do, but I still use odds and ends from my own stash or that I snatch from give-away tables, mostly Gutermann and occasionally an Aurifil. I also have a quilting friend who uses cones of thread when long-arming. From time to time she will have a cone that is just not enough to finish a quilt and in a color she doesn't care for, cream, so..... she gives the cones to me and I use them for bobbin thread. What a blessing!

I may be a confident intermediate quilter but I still struggle with some of the common skills of a beginner like sharp points and crisp matching corners. I am still working on those and getting more and more proficient. I want to continue to grow as a quilter and those two areas are what I have chosen to focus on. Others of you are following your own choices and that is what makes use better quilters. Right?