Hey guys. Noticed some amazing fades using tread. How do you go about doing this?
Sincerely,
DAn Colville

It was in a Rodmaker mag article a while back and has been done for many many years now. You add thread as you drop one from another color. Say you're wrapping 5 dk blue and 1 light blue. Then you wrap 4 dk and 2 lt, then 3 dk and 3 lt, then 2dk and 4 lt, then 1dk and 5 lt and you've got a fade from dark blue to light blue.

Mostly it boils down to your thread library. Gudebrod is sometimes inconsistant in their dying process so when I get something a shade lighter or darker I save it for that expressed purpose. Also I have managed to score or several other thread companies that are out of business and can really shade thing when I want. Also using a mixture of plain or raw thread with the NCP helps. Say you want to shade Dark Blue to Light Blue. I would start with 246 plain then go to 245 plain then to 245 NCP then to 037 plain and finally 037 NCP. If you have some Holland colors you can shade it ever better than that. Finally Madera has a huge library of thread to work with and you can really doll things up with that.

I believe the RM Mag was April/May 2000.