If you learned embroidery with stranded cotton, you are in good company. DMC and Anchor have been the default for most of the last century, and for good reason: they are consistent, affordable, colorfast, and widely available. Cotton thread is a genuinely good product.

But it is not the whole story of embroidery thread. Not by a long way.

Before stranded cotton became the standard, embroiderers worked almost exclusively with wool and silk. These were not inferior materials that cotton replaced because it was better. They were the foundation of a centuries-long tradition of fiber art, and they bring qualities to stitching that cotton simply cannot replicate. This post is for anyone who has only ever worked in cotton and is curious what they might be missing.

A Brief History: What Embroiderers Actually Used

The oldest surviving examples of European embroidery are worked in wool and silk. The Bayeux Tapestry, embroidered in the 11th century, uses wool on linen. The extraordinarily detailed ecclesiastical embroidery of the medieval period, known as Opus Anglicanum, uses silk and gold thread on linen and silk. The crewelwork tradition that flourished from the 16th through 18th centuries is worked entirely in wool. The elaborate silk shading techniques of 18th century English embroidery produced pieces of such precision that they were mistaken, at a distance, for paintings.

Cotton thread, in the form we know it today, became widely available to home embroiderers only in the 19th century. Stranded cotton as a standardized, commercially produced product is largely a 20th century development. The near-universal shift to cotton among hobby embroiderers happened within the lifetimes of people still alive today.

The narrowing of widely available materials to stitchers is very recent, and it happened largely for reasons of cost and convenience rather than craft quality. Wool and silk became less common simply because cotton was cheaper and easier to standardize at commercial scale.

What Wool Does That Cotton Cannot

Wool is a fiber with memory. Each fiber has a natural crimp that gives it elasticity, allowing it to spring back after being compressed. In needlepoint and embroidery, this means wool fills a stitch more generously than cotton does at the same thread weight. It has a subtle loft (or fluffiness/volume), that gives stitched surfaces a warmth and texture that cotton, which lies flat, cannot achieve.

Wool also has a matte finish that reads beautifully in natural light. Where silk and cotton can catch light and create sheen, wool absorbs it, producing colors that look rich and deep rather than bright and flat. If you have ever noticed that some embroidered pieces seem to glow from within rather than reflect light off the surface, there is a good chance wool is involved.

Beyond aesthetics, wool has practical advantages that embroiderers in previous centuries understood well. It is naturally resilient: the same crimp that gives it loft also means it resists pilling and abrasion better than cotton over time. A wool embroidery, properly cared for, can last centuries. We have examples to prove it.

Wool also takes dye in a way that produces colors with a depth and variation that is almost impossible to achieve with cotton. This is part of why hand-dyed wool threads look the way they do: the fiber itself has a natural variation in how it absorbs dye, which produces subtle tonal shifts within a single colorway that make stitched surfaces far more interesting than a flat, uniform color.

What Silk Adds to the Blend

Pure silk thread is the other great thread tradition in embroidery history, and it brings something wool cannot: luminosity. Silk is a protein fiber, like wool, but its structure is completely different. Where wool fibers are crimped and textured, silk is smooth and triangular in cross-section. This triangular structure reflects light in a way that gives silk its characteristic sheen, that quality that makes silk embroidery seem to shift and glow as the angle of the light changes.

In a wool and silk blend, the silk component adds this luminosity to the warmth of the wool. The result is a thread that has depth without being flat, and sheen without being slippery. The two fibers moderate each other. Pure silk can be difficult to manage: it catches on rough skin, slides off the needle easily, and requires a practiced hand. Pure wool at finer weights can lack the surface finish that some embroidery styles require. Blended, they produce a thread that handles well, takes dye beautifully, and stitches with a quality that neither fiber achieves alone.

The Three Storyteller Stitchery Bases: Which One for Your Work

At Storyteller Stitchery, we produce our wool and silk threads in three bases, and the differences between them are not just about fiber ratio. Each base is designed for a specific kind of work.

Moonspun is our 100% silk base

It is the most lustrous of the three, the most delicate to handle, and the most appropriate for fine detail work and silk shading techniques. Moonspun is also excellent for needlepoint on 18-count canvas, where its smooth finish and sheen produce a stitched surface with a richness that wool blends cannot quite match. For embroidery, it is beautiful wherever you want the thread itself to be the statement, particularly for botanical subjects, shaded work, and any piece where the light-catching quality of silk is central to the design.

Seren is our 75% wool, 25% silk blend

It was developed specifically for 18-count canvas and embroidery. The higher silk content gives it a smoother finish than our heavier blend, Awen, and it sits well in tighter stitch counts. For embroiderers coming from stranded cotton who want the qualities of a wool-silk blend without a dramatic change in handling, Seren is the most natural choice. It stitches with a smoothness that feels familiar while delivering the depth and warmth that cotton cannot.

Awen is our 80% wool, 20% silk blend

It was developed for 13-count needlepoint canvas. Awen is excellent for work where you want depth and fill: it is wonderful for needlepoint, for visible mending, and for embroidery where texture is part of the intention. For fine embroidery where a smooth, flat surface is the goal, Moonspun or Seren will serve you better. Awen is great for embroidery when you want a bolder, more textural stitch with real visual weight. In mixed media stitching, combining all three bases gives a wonderful range of texture, sheen, and surface variation within a single piece.

All three bases are hand-dyed in our studio in Arizona, where I have been working with wool and fiber dyes for over 20 years. Before I moved to the desert, I grew up in the north of England, surrounded by sheep farms and the particular kind of textile culture that comes with them. As a knitter, spinner, dyer, and stitcher, wool has been central to my creative life across the various fiber arts crafts I practice. The thread line at Storyteller Stitchery is built on that relationship with fiber, and it shows in the way the dye takes and the way the colors sit.

A Note on Color: What Hand-Dyed Means in Practice

Hand-dyed threads are not the same as commercially dyed threads, and it is worth understanding the difference before you begin a project.

Commercial thread dyeing is designed for absolute consistency. Every skein of DMC 347 is identical to every other skein. This consistency is genuinely useful, and it is what makes commercial threads so reliable for large counted work.

Hand-dyed threads are different by nature. Each skein is dyed in small batches, and subtle variation within and between skeins is part of the character of the product. In stitching, this variation produces surfaces that have tonal interest and depth, even within a single color. It is one of the qualities that makes hand-dyed work look different from commercially dyed work at a glance.

It also means that hand-dyed threads are not guaranteed colorfast in the way commercial threads are. Our dyeing process uses high-quality acid dyes and techniques designed to fully exhaust the dye bath, meaning the dye bonds to the fiber rather than sitting on the surface. In most colors and most circumstances, this produces threads that are stable and lasting.

However, very deep colors, particularly dark blues and purples, can have some residual dye that may bleed if the thread is wetted. This is not a flaw in the dyeing: it is a characteristic of deep, saturated color in hand-dyed protein fibers. Before washing any hand-dyed thread in a piece with light-colored ground fabric, I recommend testing. Wet a short strand, lay it on a piece of white paper towel, and allow it to dry completely. If there is any color transfer, avoid soaking the finished piece.

For finishing hand-dyed embroidery, my preference is steam rather than wet blocking. Hold a steam iron a few inches above the piece, allow the steam to relax the stitches, and let it dry flat. If it is very wrinkled, gently stretch the fabric and pin it to a foam board or folded towel to keep it smooth and taut as it dries. Wet blocking is not necessary, but if you must wet block or wash a finished piece rather than steaming, test for colorfastness first. Wet a short strand, lay it on a white paper towel, and allow it to dry completely. If there is any color transfer, avoid soaking the piece.

Where to Start

If you have only ever worked with cotton and you want to try wool and silk threads, my recommendation is to start with Seren. It is the most familiar in handling, the smoothest of our wool-silk blends, and it will show you what wool and silk can do without asking you to make a significant adjustment in how you work. It is also wonderful for 18ct needlepoint projects.

If you are drawn to silk and want the most luminous result, start with Moonspun. Expect a slightly different feel in the hand, and give yourself a project or two to adjust to how it moves.

If you are a needlepoint stitcher that enjoys 13ct projects, or you are interested in texture and depth over smoothness, Awen is where the character lives.

All colors in the Storyteller Stitchery palette are available in all three bases. You can explore the full collection here.

 

Storyteller Stitchery hand-dyes wool and silk threads in small batches in our studio in Queen Creek, Arizona. Our thread line is designed for needlepoint, embroidery, and mixed media textile work, and takes its color direction from literature, folklore, and the natural world. You can find the full palette in the shop.