Winding Ways

I got the neatest little gadget the other day - a winder for winding embroidery floss onto little flat plastic bobbins. I've been wanting to organize my embroidery floss better, and now was the time.



Here is the little winder - the slots on the bottom fit on the edge of the floss storage box - and you wind and wind until all the floss is on that little white bobbin on the left side of the photo. After I bought this nice little tan winder (you can get them on ebay really inexpensively) I found that there was a pretty pink one - oh well, tan winds as well as pink. Sharon - have you been winding floss on your pretty pink winder?

First I must tell you about how I got so much floss. Some I bought for projects, such as the needlepoint pillows that you can see HERE. Some I got for other embroidery projects, like my Crazy Quilt - made from my hand painted cotton fabrics. Since the fabric is 100% cotton, I decided that the embroidery would also be only cotton floss. . So I have lots of embroidery floss for that project. It is an ongoing project - I make a section and when it is embroidered I attach it to the other sections and one day I will have a bed size Crazy Quilt.

(click the photos to see the stitching close up)

Back to my floss story - My mom had a friend who was a Home Ec teacher, and when she retired from teaching she had boxes of floss left that wasn't going to be used - and so she sent it to me. Now that was very nice of her - though when I opened the box I found it was groups of colors - over 40 skeins of each color. The most of one color was turquoise - and over the years I've used some of it - but I didn't want to wind that many bobbins of turquoise, knowing I'd never use it all - so I started a plastic bag of "give-away" floss - surely my friends want some turquoise floss. As I sorted through the floss I discovered the other colors my mom's friend had given to me, I kept two of each of the colors and put the rest in the give-away bag - and I know have a quart zipper bag, stuffed with floss. Someone is going to be very happy - besides me.



The bobbins come in little bunches of 25 - all neatly bound up with a tiny, tight rubber band.

I got lots of bundles of bobbins - 20 bundles of them - 500 bobbins - and only about 2 cents each. Oh you know I love a bargain.

Now I wish I'd seen these colored ones before I bought 500 white bobbins - oh too late for that.

I won't show you what my floss looked like before I started this process - no I won't - but this is the piles of color after I had sorted it - taken out the knots and tangles and scary looking bunches of mashed up floss. I wanted to spare your little hearts and eyes of the tragedy that can befall floss if you aren't careful.

Another view - same floss - hundreds and hundreds of skeins - all colors . . .

Yes - I did too - I saved all the labels from the floss as I was winding it - and here it is - heaped up on my 12x12 inch cutting mat

An aerial view - same pile. . . I loved the old price tags - the best one I found was 3 for 10 cents - now that's a bargain.

And now - are you ready for the results? Hang on - they are fabulous results . . .

Beautiful boxes of nicely wound bobbins . . .

Lovely boxes - full of pretty rainbows of colors . . .

Three whole boxes - 375 bobbins - full of organized floss. The white and black floss are in a separate little box, they just wouldn't fit in these three boxes - which by the way - I got from Goodwill a while back. At the time I didn't know what the boxes were for, but figured they would store something in my studio very nicely - and I only paid 99 cents each.

So there you have it - the story of my floss winding adventure. It was great fun and I hope never to have to do it again. Are you embroidering something pretty?