You are right, you can use many things as long as it is strong. I prefer heavy mercurized crochet cotton using a large-eyed needle but that's what I have on hand. I also machine tack quite often.

For a quilt that sounds big and maybe? heavy, I would use a thread thicker than embroidery floss. The crochet cotton (10wt) sounds like a good candidate and wool or cotton knitting yarn (sport wt up to worsted) would also be good. If the quilt is washed often, the wool yarn will tangle and might get fuzzy, but it will hold the quilt together just fine.

Teresa

Hi, Donna. I've never tied a quilt, so I have nothing to contribute to your question, but I wanted to say, "Hello." I sometimes forget that those of us who post often are not the only ones using this forum. Be sure to post photos of your latest projects. We're glad to hear from you.

And you are correct about the folks on this forum. I, too, think they have the answers to everything quilty. And they are the friendliest bunch around.

Thank you for your thoughts. I have lots of crochet thread, but knit and crochet almost exclusively with yarn now, and I'm pretty sure I have red, so that is what I think I'll use. I'll be sure to post the finished quilt.

Red sounds like a perfect accent! What a great choice!

You might want to tie a small piece of scrap fabric with the red yarn and get it wet to be sure the color doesn't bleed before you tie the whole quilt. I don't know much about yard or crochet thread so I don't know if that's a potential problem or not.

I have used embroidery floss and never had a problem of course I used all 6 strands.. A few years ago I took all the embroidery floss off of one of the daughters quilts and quilted it with the long arm.. They were all in good shape. But wanted the edge to edge look.. Made it look like a new quilt and it was 15+ years old.

I just read an article in one of my older mag. that said to use pearl cotton to tied a quilt... As I have never tied one I have no personal opinion.

Pearl cotton would be another good option - it is very strong.

duplicate post removed

This post was edited by teresa_nc7 on Thu, Aug 28, 14 at 21:55

I use either perl cotton, or skeins of cotton yarn. It's a bugger with the cotton yarn, but on large, primitive quilts the effect is dramatic.