So I’ve been hearing mentions of this magical stretch thread for about the past year. Supposedly, you can sew stretchy knit fabrics with a regular straight stitch without worrying about the thread breaking. It sounds so good, maybe too good. But I’ve really been wanting to try it because knits are probably my favorite thing to sew!

So when I saw some eloflex stretch thread from Coats & Clark for sale at the Sewing and Stitchery Expo this past month, I just had to buy some. I originally wasn’t planning on doing a review, I just wanted to try it for myself. But, hey, maybe some of you are wondering how it works too! So read on for my eloflex thread review!

So on the Coats & Clark blog page (Make it Coats), they have a post about their eloflex stretch thread. You can see it here. They claim that special stitches are not required and that seams won’t pop when stretched even when sewn with a regular straight stitch. They also list some items you can sew with their thread, like lingerie, swimsuits, and dancewear.

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The test

So I decided to test out this thread in comparison to one of my go-to threads, the very affordable and dependable Dual Duty XP All Purpose Polyester thread, also from Coats & Clark.

I tried the threads on two different types of stretch fabrics; a thicker cotton t-shirt knit from a t shirt I upcycled into a tank top and a thinner synthetic fabric with four-way stretch that I used to make a swimsuit. So these fabrics are very different, but both quite stretchy. I cut swatches that were 3 inches x 3 inches from each fabric.

I also tested both a straight stitch and a zigzag stitch. The straight stitch I used was set to a length of 2.5 and a tension of 3. For the zigzag, I used a length of 2.5, width of 4.0, and tension of 3.

I was also curious if there would be a difference between sewing 1 or 2 layers of fabric, so I tested each stitch/thread combo on both a small hem and just through one layer of fabric.

Results

How did it sew?

So the first thing I noticed was that the thread was a bit thicker and felt different than regular thread (the best way I can describe it is that it felt less smooth and obviously more elastic). I also noticed that the end of the thread really tended to fray.

Once I started sewing my swatches, other issues started to show up… The thread just didn’t go through the machine smoothly, especially when sewing the swimsuit material. I couldn’t even get the zigzag stitch sewn on the swim fabric at all because the thread kept breaking! I tried various tension settings on my machine and nothing seemed to solve the problem. If you’ve got ideas on how to change the settings on my machine so the thread doesn’t break, please let me know in the comments!

The other problem that was caused by the thread not wanting to go through the machine was that I couldn’t pull the fabric out after sewing to trim the ends. This resulted in me needing to re-thread the machine after almost every single row of stitching. In the photo below, you can see me trying to pull the fabric out from the machine; it wouldn’t go any further than that. If your machine has an automatic thread cutter, this may not be an issue for you.

How did it hold up to stretching?

So once I got the swatches sewn (except the zigzag on the swim fabric with eloflex), I ended up with eight swatches. Each had a hem at the bottom and a row of stitching at the top through the single layer of fabric.

But problems with sewing aside, the most important thing is how it holds up to stretching! So to test this, I stretched the fabric as far as I could and recorded at what point the thread broke (or if it broke at all).

T-shirt knit

The t shirt knit sewn with the eloflex worked really well! The stitching was quite smooth and didn’t have any puckering or skipped stitches. And no matter how hard I pulled the fabric, I was unable to break the thread in either the zigzag stitch or the straight stitch hem. Which is quite impressive! The straight stitch through only one layer of fabric did break after stretching the fabric 1.5 inches, which is pretty good honestly.

For comparison, the regular thread straight stitch only stretched 1 inch when sewn through one layer of fabric and 1.5 inches when sewn in a hem before breaking. But the zigzag stitch with the regular thread didn’t break at all no matter how far I stretched the fabric.

Swim fabric

Now for the swim suit fabric! So as I mentioned previously, my machine basically refused to sew the zigzag stitch in the swim fabric with the eloflex thread. But I was able to get the straight stitch sewn, though it wasn’t pretty. So how did it hold up to stretching? The eloflex sewn through one layer of fabric broke after 0.5 inches of stretching and the hem broke after 1 inch of stitching. I honestly wasn’t too impressed by this since swimsuit fabric typically needs to stretch quite a bit in the final garment.

However, I was able to stretch the swim fabric sewn with the regular thread in a straight stitch the exact same amount as the eloflex before breaking. But the zigzag stitch worked quite well with the regular thread. I was unable to break the hem at all despite stretching the fabric as far as I could (3.5 inches of stretch!). The zigzag stitch sewn through only one layer of fabric broke after stretching 2 inches.

Overall review: conclusions

Would I recommend?

I’m going to have to say I wouldn’t recommend this thread, especially if you are working with very stretchy knits such as swimsuit fabric. However, it does work reasonably well for thick cotton t shirt fabric with some structure.

Pros:

  • this thread stretches more than regular thread
  • you can sew thicker knits with a regular straight stitch without seams popping

Cons:

  • my machine did not like working with this thread
  • it tends to fray a lot, making threading the machine difficult
  • it doesn’t work well with very stretchy or thin knit fabrics

I’m really sad to say I wasn’t as impressed as I had hoped with eloflex stretch thread. If you have ideas about machine settings, different needles, etc. that may improve how my machine works with this thread, let me know! In the meantime though, I think I’ll be sticking to sewing my knits with a zigzag stitch and all-purpose thread.