Wool 101
Elizabeth Bradley Tapestry Wool is the highest quality, premium grade 4-ply tapestry wool, spun & dyed in the UK in a range of 400 beautiful shades. From the subtle and subdued to the vibrant and bright, our wool collection has the perfect colour for anything you could stitch. We use only our own luxury wool in our kits to ensure the very best results in every stitched piece.
Each new design starts it’s life in the form of a hand-painted canvas, created by our design team in London. After rounds of edits and adjustments, the piece is sent to our team in Wales to be copied, stitch-by-stitch, onto a specialised computer programme. Once this digital copy is approved, the Welsh team calculates the exact number of wool strands needed to complete the piece using a special formula. To further test our recipe figures, a staff member is given the wool, blank canvas and printed chart to stitch the design.
To create the final wool pack, the Welsh team deducts all unused wool strands from the staff stitcher’s wool pack and compares the total used by the stitcher versus the total recommended by the programme. We use whichever method allows the highest amount of each colour and add an additional 30% to the total as each stitcher works the canvas differently.
To ensure you are maximising your wool for each kit, we recommend the following for an optimal stitching experience:
- Sort your wool strands in bright light, morning is best, to avoid mixing colours & stitching areas incorrectly on the canvas.
- Use a tool like the Kit Organiser Bag or Acrylic Wool Organiser to keep your threads separated & tidy while stitching.
- Do not cut your strands, as they are already the correct size to complete your canvas. Making them shorter will result in more waste tails & cause thread shortages.
We take great pride in bringing you the finest tapestry wool available in the industry today. For more advice on getting the best out of your wool, watch the Elizabeth Bradley Tips + Techniques Video to learn all about working with EB!