Weird white thread at selvedge - MOD RRS tartan

[Tobus]

I ended up needing to cut about 10 inches of this RRS tartan for my quilt project, so I experimented a bit with the selvedge (which was trimmed off, not being useful for my purpose).

The white thread is not wool. It's some sort of poly material; a little stretchy with a slick feel to it. Maybe even silk? My first test was to see if it could be teased out little by little with a needle and removed. That was a pain, and not worth the effort for the length of material I have. It's a tiny thread, and actually there are two of them in there. Getting them both out would nearly be impossible.

Plus, as you can see below, when the white threads are pulled out, the selvedge appears more ragged. I don't know how it would behave over time.

My second test was to use Father Bill's idea and just darken it with a sharpie (black felt-tip marker). That actually worked very well! To see if it would be colour-fast, I washed the strip in soap and water after using the sharpie pen on it, and it held. So that is probably the easiest solution here: just hide it with a sharpie. No one would ever notice it, I'd bet.

Interestingly, the white thread seemed to shrink a bit in the washing process. As you can see below, on the top strip it is less noticeable in the areas that weren't touched up with the sharpie compared to the bottom strip that hadn't been altered.

[figheadair]

I ended up needing to cut about 10 inches of this RRS tartan for my quilt project, so I experimented a bit with the selvedge (which was trimmed off, not being useful for my purpose).

The white thread is not wool. It's some sort of poly material; a little stretchy with a slick feel to it. Maybe even silk?

I very much doubt that it would be silk. First and foremost, silk is much more expensive than wool so I cannot see why that would be used. Secondly, silk doesn't shrink like wool and would cause the selvedge to distort in the finishing process.

[Tobus]

I very much doubt that it would be silk. First and foremost, silk is much more expensive than wool so I cannot see why that would be used. Secondly, silk doesn't shrink like wool and would cause the selvedge to distort in the finishing process.

Yeah, I thought silk might be a long shot. I did the washing in cool water so the wool wouldn't shrink. I was just trying to see if the black marker would wash off. The change in the white thread was a surprise to me. It did not appear to shrink in length, but it just got narrower and less obvious. I may go back and pull some more of that white thread out so I can test it over a flame to see if it melts versus burns to ash.