Welcome to the wonderful world of sewing. It's good to know that you notice the "little things".

Look at the spool and on one end it should have the weight, 40, 30 or 50...50 is regular sewing and anything else would be your embroidery or quilting or hand quilting (do not use hand quilting in a sewing machine because it's treated with a chemical that gums up the machine tension system).

I use different brands and avoid gutterman because my sewing machines don't like that brand thread and always buy the large economy spools of Coats & Clark.

Your machine manual should have a section on needles and threads that explains what to use with different types of fabric.

I keep my embroidery and regular sewing thread separate so I don't get them mixed up. The glued on labels sometimes fall off the spools after a few years, or decades.

The fiber the thread is made of will cause stitching to look different, too. Is the "embroidery" thread rayon and the other polyester, perhaps? Rayon & polyester are shiny and cotton has a more dull finish.

Donna

The Guttermann threads are all 100% polyester. The weights are not on the spool. The only difference I can see is the color of the plastic spool, white or tan. However, some of the spools are a little off white, which I would think would mean it was white and it was sitting in the store for a long time.

Check your manual for the machine makerÂs suggestions on thread. Find a quality thread that works well in your machine (some have a different twist), and stick too it. Read name brand here, Coats, Madeira, etc. Do not use cotton in your embroidery machine; it is not designed to lay down 4000+ stitches at a time at 400-1200 spm.