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For this tip I wanted to share with you what I like to use in terms of color of thread for piecing and quilting. The first quilt I made in 1972 was a Grandmother's Flower Garden. I used hand blocked printed fabrics that were gathered while living in India. These were very dark rich colors in reds, blues and burgundies. Upon returning from living in India and finishing the top, I tried to find information on how to quilt it. My desire was to quilt it in a navy blue thread because all the fabrics were so dark. The few shops around in the early 70's that had any quilting supplies only had white quilting thread and they all told me, "you should never quilt a quilt with anything but white thread." I asked why and they said, "if you ever entered a contest and used other than white thread for quilting, the judges would mark you down. I was surprised by this and thought that if I ever judged a contest I would certainly not mark anyone down for using a colored thread, and eventually I found a navy blue thread to use. Thankfully times have changed and we are seeing a wide variety of colors (and types) of thread used for quilting depending on the design of the quilt and the effect the maker is trying to achieve. Many times I will use more than one color of quilting thread in a quilt. As far as piecing is concerned, I tend to use many different fabrics in a quilt and therefore prefer to use "blender" thread colors-medium brown, dull blue, gray burgundy, etc. I never use white thread for piecing unless sewing a white piece to another white piece. Whenever sewing white to another color my thread is always the color of the darker piece of fabric. The stitches are much less apt to show if the thread matches the darker color instead of the lighter.