Round thread or flat thread?

[Zachary]

I’m making a project for myself. Whenever I do I want to get the best and get exactly what I want so that when I’m done I’m happy with what I’ve made for myself. 

A spool of this carriage hemp hand sewing thread is like 30 bucks!! That’s bonkers! I’ve got plenty of flat nylon thread, and it’s not the material that I don’t like. It’s the shape.

When I hand stitch with flat thread it twists or folds over on itself and never looks the same thickness along the stitches. I mean, unless you get out your magnifying glass and look at these millimeter sized stitches you won’t notice, but I can see it and I know it’s there, making faces at me. So I figure if I get a higher quality round thread it will look perfectly uniform and even all the way along. But would it be worth the expense?

The thick, round, cord-like sewing thread looks so nice. Not huge, but visible enough to show off your nice handiwork. Is there a reliably less expensive alternative than a $30 spool of thread? Like heavy duty upholstery thread or something else that will look nice on leather? What have you used?

[koreric75]

1 hour ago, Zachary said:

I’m making a project for myself. Whenever I do I want to get the best and get exactly what I want so that when I’m done I’m happy with what I’ve made for myself. 

A spool of this carriage hemp hand sewing thread is like 30 bucks!! That’s bonkers! I’ve got plenty of flat nylon thread, and it’s not the material that I don’t like. It’s the shape.

When I hand stitch with flat thread it twists or folds over on itself and never looks the same thickness along the stitches. I mean, unless you get out your magnifying glass and look at these millimeter sized stitches you won’t notice, but I can see it and I know it’s there, making faces at me. So I figure if I get a higher quality round thread it will look perfectly uniform and even all the way along. But would it be worth the expense?

The thick, round, cord-like sewing thread looks so nice. Not huge, but visible enough to show off your nice handiwork. Is there a reliably less expensive alternative than a $30 spool of thread? Like heavy duty upholstery thread or something else that will look nice on leather? What have you used?

I've used  my spool of cowboy 207 thread and handstitched so it would match something i sewed with the machine as well.  Tandy had the carriage thread on sale for like $8/spool, off colors but the "plum" would be fine with brown or other color, the dark green looks nice as well.

[DJole]

I recently did a project using some round linen thread, from a company named Since:
https://www.amazon.com/Since-Leather-Thread-leathercraft-0-45MM-90/dp/B07H4THKRV/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=since+linen+thread&qid=1568090850&s=gateway&sr=8-1

I have also used a thicker linen thread from Royalwood. They are a basket/beading supply company, mostly, but they have a large variety of waxed linen thread in various sizes and a lot of colors:
https://www.royalwoodltd.com/cat14-17ar.htm
This thread is a bit more fiddly to hand stitch with -- it's easy to stab your needle through the thread rather than alongside it, but if you take care, it works just fine. 

I did my own wallet with the Royalwood linen, and 10 years later I had to do some restitching along one side that got a lot of wear. It held up pretty well. 

[zuludog]

Yes, I also find flat braided thread tricky to use, so I use mostly linen

Rocky Mountain Leather Supply sell the Chinese Yue Fung threads under their own label of 'Twist'; both synthetic and linen. I reckon their linen thread is easily as good as the much vaunted Fil au Chinois thread

An 80m reel of 0,55mm linen thread is $11-99. They have other threads

While you're at it, get some John James size 002 needles, JJ product code L3912. These are considered some of the best, and not too expensive; also stocked by RMLS. I changed to these from Tandy and that improved my stitching

A few months ago I bought some hemp carriage thread when my nearby Tandy store had a closing down sale. It's nice thread, but not a chance of my paying full price!

I also use Tandy's ready waxed nylon thread. Although it's synthetic, it's twisted, not braided, so is round, and easy to use

You could Search for 18/3 linen thread;  that's reasonably priced, but get it from a leathercraft supplier or buy a reputable make, like Crawfords, Coates, Barbour, Somac. Don't buy anonymous linen thread off Amazon or Ebay as some of it isn't very good

Edited September 11, 2019 by zuludog

[IngridG]

There's a tool that makes flat holes, lined up at a slant. Looks like a little pitchfork with one to six prongs. They are mainly used to sew with flat leather lacing but they can be got very small (I got mine on auction for cheap). 3mm size is about right for sinew type flat thread, the elongated hole makes it much easier to keep the thread facing one way and once you get it working it looks amazingly pro. Just search for prong hole punch or look up lacing stitching on youtube, same principle only smaller, if you can find the tool in black metal it lasts better than the silver and makes better holes, carbon steel or whatever it is. You could possibly learn the idea faster with a larger set and using lacing. The idea is a round hole for round lacing and a flat hole for flat lacing. In general I find *not twisted or braided thread is much easier to make look good (imitation sinew).

[Zachary]

On 9/11/2019 at 10:56 AM, zuludog said:

Yes, I also find flat braided thread tricky to use, so I use mostly linen

Rocky Mountain Leather Supply sell the Chinese Yue Fung threads under their own label of 'Twist'; both synthetic and linen. I reckon their linen thread is easily as good as the much vaunted Fil au Chinois thread

An 80m reel of 0,55mm linen thread is $11-99. They have other threads

While you're at it, get some John James size 002 needles, JJ product code L3912. These are considered some of the best, and not too expensive; also stocked by RMLS. I changed to these from Tandy and that improved my stitching

A few months ago I bought some hemp carriage thread when my nearby Tandy store had a closing down sale. It's nice thread, but not a chance of my paying full price!

I also use Tandy's ready waxed nylon thread. Although it's synthetic, it's twisted, not braided, so is round, and easy to use

You could Search for 18/3 linen thread;  that's reasonably priced, but get it from a leathercraft supplier or buy a reputable make, like Crawfords, Coates, Barbour, Somac. Don't buy anonymous linen thread off Amazon or Ebay as some of it isn't very good

Hey I didn’t know about Rocky Mountain Leather Supply. I’m going to check them out. Thanks a lot for the feed back everyone.