Organizing Your Spools of Thread and Bobbins
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Welcome to Day 5 of 31 Days of Getting Organized!
I think of all the ways I am organized in my sewing room, I love the way my threads and bobbins are organized the best.
I first saw a thread stand in one of my friend’s sewing rooms. Her husband had put a few bits of wood on the wall and added dowels for the spools of thread. I loved that idea – but there were two problems with that design:
- I didn’t to screw boards of wood onto the wall…
- I wanted to have my bobbins with the spools of thread, because I like to use the same thread top and bottom.
So I discussed with my dad, who is an “ideas man”, and we came up with the following design:
It’s a portable one that can go on a table, or shelf… and I can take it with me when I change countries 🙂 The dowels are long enough to pop the bobbin under the spool of thread so that I can keep track of them and waste less thread. Yes, it means I need to have a lot of bobbins – but I have managed to get a bunch of them given to me, bought some second hand, and I discovered they are very cheap here… so every now and then I will buy a handful of them at a time 🙂
The thread holder above is the second one my dad made for me. He made it last year, and I got him to take lots of photos so that we could make a tutorial for you all… Just click on the photo below to check it out:
Another thread holder I have back in Oz is this one:
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It was made for me by my “adopted son” (one of eldest DS’s friends) last year, using his 3D printer…
And, when I was visiting Alice earlier this year, I took a pic of her thread holder, which is super cool:
So that is how I organize my spools of threads and bobbins… Before Dad made me the thread holders, my threads and bobbins were a jumbled mess… so like I said, I am so happy with this solution. Even if everything else in my sewing room gets unorganized, my threads and bobbins are sorted 🙂
How do you store your threads and bobbins?
My poor threads are still living in a shoe box. I have a thread holder just no where to set it up. 🙁 :(. I love your thread holders & that you can keep the bobbins with the reels.
The 3D printed one is a good idea…. just need to send my children to high school so they can make me one! In the meantime my threads live in clear thread boxes which keeps the dust off the ones I use less often.
Check your library; they might have a 3D printer like ours does.
mine are stored very similar to yours (and handmade by Hubz) but in a drawer ….. so convenient in those to see the colours easily and not have threads tangled…
Hugz
Hi Joy, I like the way your threads are organized. Mine are in those little plastic boxes. Nancy
Your dad and my Paul would have gotten along together well! Paul made something similar for me, when I had the longarm. However, I wound up buying mostly cones for that, so he put up a second-hand shelf unit we bought from a business to hold the cones, and I stacked my bobbins on the thread holder, like colors together, since it usually takes several bobbins to get through a quilt.
Now, I mostly use cones for my top thread, wind 5 bobbins at a time from that and store them in the case behind my machine bed, so they are always easily available. I do have a small dowel thing that came from Fat Quarter Shop in a Sew Sampler, back when I got those. I have a few small spools of Aurifil colors that I keep on that. I’ll send you a pic of how I keep my embroidery threads. You will laugh.
Brilliant idea & I did have one similar once, but it was poorly made & fell apart eventually. Your Dad’s would last forever!! I need something like that for my cones for Bubs. You know where I keep my sewing machine cotton, though. The laser cut one is interesting. Thanks for sharing & take care.
I like mine on thread holders, too!
Most of mine are stored in a wall unit my husband made…envision a picture frame for the outside (he made it, but that’s what it looks like)…he inserted ‘shelves’ made of probably 1 1/2″ dowels and then drilled holes along the thicker dowel to insert shorter smaller thickness of dowels to hold the spools. When he affixed the thick dowel to the frame he put it on another small piece of dowel so they tilt in and out as I need them to. On the bottom he made two shelves that are solid. I just wish he’d made it bigger because it’s full and I have more stored in a drawer which isn’t ideal.
I love the vertical dowel idea – but not sure where I’d put it. And a Guterman wall would be fun…but
Mine are stored in empty Ferrero Rocher choc boxes – the rectangular ones and (of course) colour coordinated and 4 of those fit in a drawer from an old bedside table. Bobbins go in a bobbin case that has a soft spongy thing in it with cut outs to hold the bobbins – they never fall out.
Then there are the machine embroidery threads – that is where I’d love to keep a bobbin with the thread…might work on that. Thanks for the great ideas.