For many years we've sold Zweigart's Kingston as an embroidery fabric and were never concerned about the "count". It wasn't made for counted work but for surface embroidery. The older mill runs (which we have) are in the 53/59 range. The newer mill runs are in the 50/55 range. If you follow Nicola Parkman of Hands Across The Sea Samplers, you'll see that she stitched one of her new samplers on what she called 56 count. Technically that's what Zweigart had it listed as for many years. Her fabric was hand-dyed so the count came out to be more like 52/56 or in that range.
Why does this matter you? As mentioned above no one used it as a counted fabric until very recently. If you are planning to use it for counted work, be sure to check what mill run it's from. We have split Kingston into 2 separate items for the 50/55 and 53/59 version in our online catalog. The 53/59 is not milled anymore so if you do embroidery this is the one the purchase and we grabbed all of the yardage we could find of it in the US. It's a much finer fabric and is wonderful for surface embroidery.
We are waiting on some hand-dyed Kingston from Week's Dye Works and it will be the less dense version from a recent mill run.
So be sure to check what the count is listed as when you order Kingston from us. If you order from another shop, ask them to check what count it is as they are probably not aware of the changes. If they only started ordering it recently, chances are they have the 50/55 version.
You can stitch on Kingston with both Au ver a Soie Soie 100/3 and Soie Surfine. In the photo above to the left you'll see Ballina, which is Kingston without the sizing (no longer made). But you can see how different the weave is.
You'll find the variants of Kingston, including the Week's hand-dyed colors, in our online catalog.
