Organic Cotton Thread

Organic Cotton Thread

This, in the centre, is that holiest of grails: organic cotton sewing thread. Not only that, but it’s available to purchase in the UK!

This is something that I’ve been trying to track down for a long time. It seemed ridiculous to be sewing organic cotton fabric with polyester thread (right), and in fact I do use cotton threads (left) now when I’m sewing natural fibres like cotton or linen. But surely if I’m making organic cotton clothing, I should be able to sew it with organic cotton thread? Sadly, it simply wasn’t available.

A couple of years ago I bought some organic cotton thread from Near Sea Naturals in America. Unfortunately my sewing machine didn’t like it (it won’t tolerate thread that’s the slightest bit fluffy), and it did seem a bit silly to add so many airmiles to my sewing thread in the first place.

Coats EcoVerde is a range of recycled polyester and organic cotton threads, but they’re available to industry only, so that’s no help.

And then, when I went to place my most recent order with organiccotton.biz… there it was! Organic cotton thread! It’s available in 11 colours, but I went with cream to begin with so that I can do some dye tests on it. It comes on nice big 275m spools for £2.99, and the spools themselves are wooden which makes them ideal for keeping and recycling afterwards.

I’d just assumed that organic cotton thread would be a lot more expensive than polyester or even ordinary cotton, but for the natural colour it actually works out ever so slightly cheaper! Other colours are £3.99 a spool, but even that doesn’t compare too badly.

As you can see from the picture above, I haven’t actually tested it out yet, so I do need to keep my fingers crossed that my machine doesn’t chew it up and spit it out. But it looks nice and fine and smooth, finer than the Coats cotton, even, so I live in hope that it’ll be good.

All I need then is to be able to buy it in overlocker-sized cones. I’m going to get through an awful lot of 275m spools otherwise!

0 thoughts on “Organic Cotton Thread”

  1. Hi Courtney, the Scanfil thread goes through my machine really well – it’s very smooth, and doesn’t create a lot of fluff as you sew. I’d definitely recommend it!

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