How does one organise hundreds of sewing thread spools?
What started out as an innocent bedroom drawer re-organisation at the beginning of the week has turned into a mammoth task of organising EVERYTHING around me. Armed with my trusty cleaning basket and a roll of plastic garbage bags I set out to de-clutter the house. It took all week but boy am I feeling a lot better!
I left my workspace till the end as it's the most overwhelming. I started to organise my sewing threads this morning. I inherited a LOT of spools from a deceased family member a few years ago who owned a haberdashry, and I had them stored in little boxes on my shelves. Since I never bothered to organise them in any way, I can never find the colour I need etc. I keep finding myself shopping for threads because I'm too lazy to go through the boxes to find what I want.
Following a huge IKEA storage box shopping session yesterday, I took them all out today and did some preliminary sorting:
Blues and Greens
Reds and Pinks
Yellows and Browns (plus anything that didn't fit into the other colour batches!)
I also separated the cotton threads from the polyester ones because they are a different size and I like things to match :
I think that that is as far as I can deal with at the moment, at least now they are in colour batches and fit into 4 large boxes instead of tens of little ones! Most people assume that I have a large yarn stash and don't realise that I have a sewing thread stash that far exceeds a small shop! I wish I knew where to get those nifty spool holders that shops have where you can 'push' in the spools and pop them out when you need them. Do you know what I mean? I think they'd look so much prettier than being crammed into boxes.
I'm going on a charity shop hunt next week to see if I can find one of those vintage wooden sewing boxes I've seen on some very lucky sewer's blogs. I really don't like the padded, cloth-covered baskets that are on sale; I want an oldish one that I can revamp to hold my sewing bits and pieces and dozens of opened spools.
Off to do some more organising, I still have embroidery threads and thread cones to sift through and untangle!
Spools of thread COULD be stored on sort of peg boards, with long pegs/dowels, facing slightly upwards...I keep mine in big sweetie jars, also by colour...sort of. a few years back a DIY shop closed down near us, it had a decent craft/fabric/haberdashery section...I think I bought most of their thread, incl. silk yarn - perfect for applique, hand quilting thread and other such gems for some ridiculous sum of money...however, your thread stash is way way ahead of my modest one ;)))))
Well Done - I love a good sort out, especially of colourful items. I find I often have to redo the done! At least colour coding in separate boxes is a great start even if a bankrupcy sale takes a while to provide a shop dispenser!
looks like fun mish!!! oh how i miss our "organising days"... well done on sorting out that room!!!
Now that looks painful! The threads always get tangled no matter what!
They look so pleasing sorted into different colours! This is what I've got to get round to doing in my craft room. Any advice on the best storage solutions would not go amiss!!
Hehe! how fun! what a ME thing for you to do!! wish i was there to go neatfreak-nazi on you..
Post new comment