My go-to thread for piecing has always been Coats & Clark All-Purpose, bought by the fistful at Joann's and anywhere else I could find it. It's corespun, which means it has a polyester core covered in another material -- which I always assumed was cotton (or used to be when I first started buying it...anyone remember this? Or am I imagining things?). When I'm in The Zone, I can go through a spool in just a few days.
It's held up well to washing and ironing, and has never let me down...until this week.
I was about 80% finished with the quilting on one of my baby quilts this weekend, the quilt bunched on the table next to me, when I noticed one of the seams in the middle of the quilt looked a little funny. It was raised a little, like I hadn't ironed it all the way. And when I grabbed between my thumb and forefinger to take a closer look, this happened:
The seam gave way under my thumbnail like I was perforating it, the thread brittle, crackling as it broke. You can see the spiky little thread ends on the top part of the seams in the picture (which showed up best in black and white) -- they were like little staples when I pulled them out with tweezers.
Panicked, I started looking at more of the seams and found another (where the pin is, which is strange because these pieces were constructed separately and ended up next to each other pretty much randomly). Sick to my stomach and afraid to go any further, I secured the spots with pins and set it aside until I could look at it without crying. It's still sitting on my cutting table.
Near as I can figure, I melted the thread -- which, as it turns out, is polyester covered in polyester, not cotton, and therefore might not stand up to the cotton setting as well as it should. But I'm using the same iron I've used for months with this same brand of thread, and didn't do anything different in constructing this quilt than any other. Maybe I hit a bad couple stretches of thread that weren't completely covered? All I know is I have a quilt that I've put a lot of time into that now has the potential to fall apart at first washing unless I can think of a way to fix it without totally messing up the existing quilting.
I love a challenge, but now? Not good timing.
Has this happened to anyone else? Or am I a cautionary tale?
