Does Your Knotty Embroidery Floss Need a Time Out?

by Lisa
(www.uniquehomemadegifts.com)

Embroidery Floss Ring / Bobbins

Don’t let your embroidery floss get the best of you! A little time spent organizing it can create a much more peaceful and productive stitching environment. (For both of you!)

Working with the floss in its purchased state can sometimes be a pain. Once you get down to where there isn’t much floss left, you will inevitably lose your paper wrapping with the number on it. This can become a serious problem when you need to know exactly what color it is. (What a pain!) Pulling out a length of floss to work with can be a mess, too. Tangles... knots... and wasted floss, Oh my!

Some embroidery kits will come with a piece of hard stock or cardboard cut into a cute little shape with holes in it for your floss. Some will even have the numbers and the floss already on them. While this is a great way to package everything, it leaves something to be desired when you are trying to work with it. Each time you pull a strand of floss off the little organizer, you create knots and tangles. It’s enough to make anyone squeal with frustration!

Don’t get me wrong, these kind of organizers can be great for smaller projects. They’re great if you’re just getting started and don’t really have much of an embroidery floss inventory. They are a quick, cheap and easy fix, but you usually spend more time untangling your floss than stitching with it. And isn’t that the point? Stitching?

Here’s how I solve that problem. I purchased some fairly inexpensive cardboard bobbins. (I moved up to the plastic ones once I had a little larger budget! They’re great. They don’t bend or tear as easily as the cardboard ones do, if they are heavily used.) They look just like a one dimensional bobbin. They have slits in the top to secure your thread ends. I also purchased some small zip baggies and a clasp ring. The stuff I use is created by someone brilliant, (probably a fellow stitcher!) just for this purpose! It can be found at just about any craft store. There is a place on each baggie to write the floss number, and a hole punched into the baggie to attach it to the ring.

When I purchase new floss, into a baggie it goes. I mark the number on the bag and load the bag in numerical order on my ring. (Ok, 1 of 3 rings!) Whenever I need floss, I simply find the number, pull out what I need, and wrap the remaining portion on the bobbin. It’s that simple. It saves me hours of headaches and tangle frustration.

I also use what I call a “working ring”. Whenever I’m starting a project, I will go through my existing floss, pull off all the baggies that contain what I need, and add them to my working ring. This ring of floss baggies follows my project where ever it goes. When I’m done with my project, I put all the baggies back on their original rings. This method makes it incredibly simple to find what I need for a project, or when I need to go shopping. I can look through the baggies, see which floss colors I’m in need of, make my list, and I’m off to the store. Quick and easy! It may cost a little bit to organize this way, but boy is it worth it!!