My favorite place to get thread is Wawak, and my favorite brand is Gutermann. In a pinch when I needed black thread and didn’t want to wait for shipping, I had grocery pick-up at Wal-mart toss in a few spools of Coats & Clark thread. I’ve used Coats and Clark before—from JoAnn Fabrics—and it performed just as well as Gutermann. (I like Gutermann a tad better because of their colors and it just feels more well-made to me for some reason.)
The offending Wal-Mart thread
I don’t know what the deal is with this thread but I have never had so many issues as I’ve had with these spools. The quality is atrocious.
- Fraying. Sewing along on at least a half dozen occasions, the thread begins to fray. As though one strand is unwinding from another strand, and one of them continues through the needle while the other bunches up in my metal guides and jams my whole machine.
- Ends tied together. Not even joking. Twice on one spool, it was as if the thread broke and someone had tied the broken ends back together and just kept winding the spool. Needless to say, this did NOT make my machine happy. Nor me.
Just look at the quality difference below.
The top thread is from a Gutermann spool from Wawak. The middle thread is from a smaller Gutermann spool from JoAnn’s. The bottom thread is this pathetic excuse for thread from Wal-mart. I don’t know how this can be Coats & Clark. It’s literal garbage. Look at the fibers coming off of it. And how unevenly wound it looks in comparison to my Gutermann threads.
And so, because it bears repeating…
I completely agree- garbage- it feeds poorly and jams my machine. As soon as I use thread from other sources everything is fine.