Painter’s Palette – Thread Review
Tentakulum is a German company hand-dyeing many different threads in colors inspired by different painters. Each is named for the painter (last names for the men, first for the women). The line is distributed in the US by YLI.
There is a huge variety of threads in this line. In the small piece pictured above, each patch used a different color of a different thread. These included two different Au Ver A Soie silks, Shimmer Blend Ribbon Floss, and matte cotton. In total in the line there are eight silks (including ribbon), four cottons, crewel wool, two metallics, and two rayon threads. You can see a complete listing on their colours page, near the bottom. Click on any thread name to get the most recent batch of colors for that thread.
Each color is named for a painter. Some of then are reflective of colors present in most of their work. An example of this is Klimt, which is a combination of golds. Others are typical of a period, such as the blues of Picasso. Still others, such as Van Gogh, are typical of a particular painting (Sunflowers in that case). To be quite honest in some cases I don’t know why a thread is named for one artist rather than another, but it still is an interesting approach to color.
This star was stitched in the same color of thread, Klee, in two different threads. While you can see that the palette is similar, the matte cotton is significantly darker than the silk. The same thing can happen not only from thread to thread, but from dye lot to dye lot. The bright green in the patchwork is Rousseau, but if you look at the colors page, you will see the current batch of Rousseau is much lighter. This is true for most threads I tested in two dye lots or threads.
I love the idea behind The Painter’s Palette threads. I like that these threads capture colors from different artists. However, I think they will only work well in geometric, patchwork, or abstract pieces. With just about every color I tried, the colors were varied enough that they would be hard to incorporate in hand painted canvas needlepoint.
The inconsistency in dye lots is another problem. If you buy everything you need for a project at once, you will be able to match. But hoard your thread, even for a short time and you won’t even come close to matching. Without dye lot numbers on the packages, you can’t even ask about matches. This limits the line’s usefulness severely.
Given that, I would say these threads are an outstanding choice for learning about new threads and for doing geometric pieces. They will also work well for accent threads, stash projects and geometrics.
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