Tuesday, March 6

Sorting


I was reading a post on BariJ's blog yesterday about organizing your embroidery stuff. I'd love to be organized (I want to write that word with an 's' instead of a 'z' but Blogger doesn't let me!) but I'm pretty hopeless at it, as the photo shows. Even the cat looks a bit lost...And this is just one of my craft hang outs in the house. The books, patterns and the hoops are not the biggest problem. The Floss is...My Floss stash continues to grow and I'm kind of fed up with winding all the skeins on bobbins. I'm also a very messy stitcher and don't want to worry too much about numbers and bobbins while I'm creating. So I'm thinking of just sorting skeins on colour (roughly) and put them in little baskets or zip locks, would that work?  I actually would love to own one of those awesome vintage DMC cabinets (like this one) to store my floss but the prices for those on Ebay are just way too high! I guess for now I will just invest in a pack of zip locks instead. ;)


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19 comments:

  1. Carina6 March 2012 at 17:30

    Sorted by colour in ziplocs works for me! :-)

    Besides I haven't got time to wind my thread on bobbins and I really don't like the kinks it gives in the thread.

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    1. Nicole Follow the White Bunny6 March 2012 at 17:48

      but how do you keep track of the numbers? I tend to lose those paper thingies with the numbers on fairly quickly!

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    2. Carina6 March 2012 at 23:30

      I've made a commitment to those number thingies. "I do my best not to lose you, you do your best not to get lost."

      Or something. ;-)

      Seriously, I rarely lose them. And when I do, it's usually from a colour I use a lot so I either know which colour it is, or I can quickly compare it with my colour chart and/or the colour's neighbours.. And those colours I use often I usually have more than one skein of making it easy-ish to find the number..

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  2. Little Red Emo Hood6 March 2012 at 18:12

    I'm a bobbin winder, but when I start something new, I never check my bobbins, I just use my full skeins, and then I end up with like 6 bobbins of the same colour! DOH!

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    1. Nicole Follow the White Bunny6 March 2012 at 18:25

      I tend to keep my bobbins with the projects I'm working on, and as I always have about ten projects on the go I lose track of them as well. That and 2 messy floss boxes and heaps of unsorted bobbins and skeins... I also buy lots of dmc 166 for some reason...!?!?

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  3. giddy996 March 2012 at 18:47

    I use the little zip lock bags that have holes in them, and then have them on a big ring (there is a pic on my Flickr). UBER-handy! I actually have multiple rings now, but I miss having them on one big ring.

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    1. Nicole Follow the White Bunny6 March 2012 at 19:19

      We actually only have one or two different sizes of zip locks available over here (definitely not zip locks with holes anyway) so I will have to look for alternatives :)

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  4. Anonymous6 March 2012 at 19:05

    I'm kind of messy with my floss, I get confused with all the numbers and sometimes I simply don't care about them. I've seen that DMC cabinet here in Argentina, at a haberdashery still being used!! It would be lovely if getting one of those. Good luck with the organization.

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    1. Nicole Follow the White Bunny6 March 2012 at 19:21

      thanks! :) I didn't expect you to be messy with your floss! I mainly use the numbers for my patterns...

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  5. Cyndi loves to stitch6 March 2012 at 19:11

    Several years ago I had oodles and boodles of floss and it was EVERYWHERE and jumbled. So this is what I did......... I always have lots sizes of ziplocks on hand, I use more zips for craft projects than food, lol (For this I used gallons and snack size.
    I sorted all COMPLETE skeins first by color families, red yellow orange etc. Then my second sort was in numerical order within the color family these go into snack size zips (usually several numbers in the snack size bags, not one for each number unless I had 20 of one number, oops. lol). and the whole color family goes in a gallon size zip, and the gallon bags are are stored in a pretty good size tub. Colors that I could not identify got used for odd projects and grandkids things braclets etc. Because I was a messy, disorganized stitcher too, also I changed how I use them. I tried several ways and like others, I also thought bobbins were a pain and left kinky thread. Now, when I start a new skein I pull off the wrapper things,(save the one with the number) undo the skein it's full length, fold in half once, and twice and then the 3rd time I fold it in thirds not halves and clip the ends. Then you end up with 12 pc approx 20-22" or so. I like it, seems perfect length for redwork. (If you like longer pieces make 3rd fold in half.) Then pinch the ends and slip the ends back into the wrapper, and bring that end around and stuff it back into the wrapper again on the same side you started with, forming a circle around wrapper, pull ned snugging it up around wrapper. Then the threads will stay with wrapper/number and you can pull just one strand out at a time. I try to keep all the little wrappers I empty when starting a new design so I know how much of what I used for the pattern info, but so far am not the best at that. :)

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    1. Nicole Follow the White Bunny6 March 2012 at 19:24

      haha 20 of one number :) Thank you for your tips Cyndi, I like the idea of cutting the skeins in workable lengths, no-one threads their needle with 8 meters of floss!

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  6. Unknown6 March 2012 at 19:26

    I recently got a little stackable plastic container - three small levels of containers - in the bargain/dollar area of our Target that I started using for current projects. Works for organization on a small-scale. Larger scale, I'm still a bit of a mess as well. Glad to know there are plenty of messy stitchers out there.

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    1. Nicole Follow the White Bunny6 March 2012 at 21:49

      I usually have my projects in separate zip locks or project bags along with the flosses I'm using, which works reasonably well. I just never bother to return the flosses I used for a project to the floss boxes I have and they end up...well everywhere really!

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  7. Leah6 March 2012 at 21:00

    I'm a huge fan of zip-loc snack bags! They keep everything clean and I just pop any bits of floss that are still usable back in. That way I never lose track of what number it is. And I just made a storage box with partitions to keep them loosely organized by number. So far it it's working great!

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    1. Nicole Follow the White Bunny6 March 2012 at 21:52

      so you have a snack bag for each colour number?!? wow! That kind of system would work for me! (I think)

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  8. Lenna Green of Stitching Cow7 March 2012 at 01:24

    Oh I just love that old vintage DMC cabinet, keep dreaming and imagining it in your home. You never know !

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  9. Andrea Belarruti7 March 2012 at 04:51

    I have exactly the same problem...I'm a mess, but good luck with organizing, I've been thinking it is very important to invest some time into creating an organized space for crafting. So, go ahead and buy your zip locks, it's a good start :)

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    1. Nicole Follow the White Bunny7 March 2012 at 09:39

      I already started last night with the zip locks I had on hand! :)

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