Cosmo Floss

I was asked by Amy Friend of During Quiet Time to join in with a handful of other makers for the Heartland Fabrics Blog Tour. Have you checked out Amy’s Gilmore Girls coffee cup sew along yet? Pause here so you can go check out her character inspired coffee cups! Is anyone else as excited for the Netflix reboot as I am?!

But back to Heartland Fabrics! Designed by Pat Bravo for Art Gallery Fabrics, these fabrics are a muted palette of Scandinavian inspired designs. I say muted, because I’m usually all about the color…the more saturated the better! It was a challenge that I welcomed to tone down my usual color palette and work with the palest shades of mint, ivory and pink!

Choosing my threads was easy, having picked up several shades of the newest Eleganza Perle Cotton thread colors at Quilt Market. The newest colors (available very soon!) are based on a more primitive color palette and were just the colors I needed for stitching on these Heartland Fabrics. For the delicate bit of sparkle, I used Cosmo Shabon-dama, which I also picked up at Quilt Market.

I chose to create a hoop art trio from my fabric selections.

Here is the full list of makers for this blog tour…be sure to check out what they created with this fabric too!

November 7 Debbie, A Quilter’s Table
November 8 Jess, Craftiness Is Not Optional and Charise, Charise Creates
November 9 Jade, Stitch Mischief
November 10 Amanda, Jedi Craft Girl
November 11 Kari, Craft Happy
November 14 Stephanie, Spontaneous Threads
November 15 Christopher, The Tattooed Quilter
November 16 Kerry, Kid Giddy
November 17 Nichole (that’s me!)
November 18 Krista, Poppyprint

And would you like the chance to stitch a hoop with this gorgeous fabric and thread palette? Leave a comment here for your chance to win!

As a stitcher who has used, almost exclusively, DMC floss for years now, i’ve been excited to recently add some other floss and thread brands into my stitching arsenal. If you’ve been following along on Instagram, you already know how much I love the Sue Spargo Eleganza perle cotton…if you haven’t tried that yet, I definitely recommend it. It comes in a saturated color palette and adds extra shine and texture to your stitching.

Here you can see pictured from left to right: Cosmo, DMC and Eleganza.

Cosmo floss is not as easy to find in the US. In fact, there are not any stores local to me that sell it. It would be nice to actually see the colors in person before deciding what to buy, but, alas…. Fortunately, there are online shops that carry Cosmo floss. DMC floss is stocked at every craft store, from Joann Fabrics, to Michaels, A.C. Moore and Hobby Lobby.

Pricing is a factor that you may want to consider also. DMC Floss costs $0.40-0.50 a skein. Cosmo is around $1.30-1.60 a skein. And Eleganza is about $5 for a (70-yard) spool. With DMC and Cosmo, you are able to separate the 6-strands into however many you like to stitch with. Eleganza Perle cotton does not separate into strands; it is about the thickness of three stands of the other varieties of floss.

As far as stitching difference, I would say the most noticeable difference is the feel of the threads. Cosmo has a silkier feel when compared with DMC. It is also slightly easier to separate the strands and there are fewer tangles. When stitching with all 6 strands, Cosmo provides a slightly thicker line of stitching than DMC. Eleganza rarely tangles and also has a silky feel. DMC comes in more colors and is easier to find, but Cosmo and Eleganza are well worth shopping online to find.

If I had to rate them in which order I would choose a thread to stitch with, I would start with Eleganza first, Cosmo second and DMC third. All are excellent threads, though, and I certainly won’t be giving up DMC when I need a quick floss fix!

Let me know what other differences you’ve noticed between these threads or if you have another favorite that I didn’t mention here!