Organizing embroidery floss

There are many different ways of organizing embroidery floss. The method you choose may depend on how many skeins you have, how much you want to spend, how many projects you have on the go at one time and how many different types of thread you keep at hand. This page will give you lots of ideas and direct you to the right places to get your own thread collection in order.

Bobbins - LoRan Thread cards - Flossaway bags - DMC stitchbows

Reasons for organizing embroidery floss?

When you are ready to start a new project the first step may be to find or purchase the required threads. If you are not organized it can often take longer to search through your stash to find the floss than it would to go and buy new skeins.

I know that if I'm desperate to get started on something new I don't want to spend ages rummaging through untidy boxes trying to pick the right colours. And fresh, new skeins have much more appeal than the scruffy remnants at the bottom of the box anyway!

When eventually I realized that it was time to start organizing my embroidery floss I found I had many skeins of the same colour stored in a multitude of places around the house. Did I really need 8 almost full skeins of electric blue? Think of the money I could have saved!

Think it through first

Before I visited the shops to spend money on an floss organization system I took some time to work out what I actually wanted organizing my embroidery floss to do for me.

I needed to be able to find a particular thread easily and quickly
I wanted to be able to see if the colour I needed was missing or in a project somewhere
I needed to store the floss safely at home . . .
in the space available
and I needed a way to carry some with me when working on a project

Organizing embroidery floss by number or colour?

You have a choice to make here. Do you want your floss sorted into number order or in colour families? If you work from charts you may find organizing your embroidery floss by number more useful. It makes it quicker to go down the list of threads and pick the ones you want.

However, if you are designing something for yourself or want to use up oddments, organizing by colour family may be more sensible. Lets say you need three pinks for a flower, it is probably quicker to go to your pink section and choose which ones to use than find them in a system organized by number.

Options for organizing embroidery floss

So what is available? What works for me may not work for you, we all have different needs. But one thing is for sure, the system you choose does not need to cost the earth!

Drawers - My local needlework shop stores the floss in wall units with transparent fronted drawers, one colour to a drawer. Although this may not be possible at home a quick trip to your local DIY store may find something similar. You are sure to find units designed for storing nails and things. Some of these may be great for organizing embroidery floss. My tip is to take some skeins with you so that you can try the units for size. Ideally you want something with drawers deep enough to hold a skein laying from front to back without scrunching it up. You probably won't need a complete drawer for just one colour so you could make some simple dividers with folded card to separate the skeins. Neat labels on the drawers giving the colour numbers make the threads easy to find.

The drawbacks to this system arise if you do not have the whole collection of threads when you set it up. Do you miss out the colour numbers that you do not have? Or do you have to reorganize the drawers later when you increase your stock?

Bobbin boxes - Many people like to use a system of wrapping their floss onto numbered Floss Caddy Bobbins which are then stored in boxes.

It is simple enough to insert new threads when purchased and individual bobbins can be removed and hung on a ring to keep with a project. The boxes, such as the Collins Bobbin Box - 6''x3-3/4''x1-1/4'' are transparent allowing you to see the colour range without opening the box.

The LoRan Project Card for Floss - 3/Pkg - is one of my favourite systems for getting organized. Basically you have rectangles of firm card with a row of holes punched down the right hand side. Each hole holds a skein of thread, cut once into the ideal stitching length. To attach the floss fold the lengths in half and push the folded end through the hole, pass the cut ends through the loop and pull snugly around the hole.

Write the colour number beside each hole and punch the left hand side to fit into a LoRan Thread Organizer - Black . Number the cards for all the threads in the range and add new floss to the correct card in your system as you purchase it.

Just enough floss for each project can be removed and attached to a smaller card leaving the bulk of the thread in the original binder. It is simple to remove just one length, for use, with the eye end of your needle. Any unused thread at the end of a project can be returned to the binders.

The "Floss-A-Way Econo Pack With 3"" Ring" - Another method of organizing embroidery floss is to use small plastic ziploc bags. Each bag holds one colour. Full skeins and leftover strands can be stored in the same bag. You can store the bags in boxes or baskets in either number or colour order. My friend Angie keeps all her blues in one basket and the greens in another for example.

The bag system works well for project storage, also. Just thread the required bags onto the ring to carry around with you. Write the numbers on the bags with a permanent marker and you're set to go.

You might also want to consider the DMC StitchBow Floss Organizing System which contains 5 different accessories for storing and organizing your threads.

I hope this introduction has given you some ideas for organizing embroidery floss.

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