Tips & Tricks – Organizing Embroidery Floss
June 28, 2009 by Chloe Findlay-Harder
Filed under Home & Living
I recently picked up an adorable cross stitch kit. I normally prefer to buy patterns and then pick embroidery floss up separately, but I just couldn’t find a pattern I liked.
The benefit of buying a kit, is that if you only need a foot of a particular color, you don’t need to buy a whole hank of floss.
Of course, the downside is trying to separate 25 different colors of embroidery floss that have been knotted together…
I like to organize my floss in bright, natural light. I find I get the best color separation in natural light – there is just no point for me to try and do it at night under a lamp!
I write the name and color code of each color of floss onto a strip of paper and then tuck it and the floss inside a mini baggie. I buy boxes of 200 baggies at my local craft store, normally quite inexpensively too.
image: C Findlay-Harder
That way I can easily tell which color is whice, even when I’m embroidering at night. You can reuse the baggies over again, which is why I don’t like to write on the bags themselves.
Now just remember to keep all the baggies together…
great idea! I also use the cardboard sheet that usually comes in a kit packaging and punch holes near the edge on both long sides. Then I write the name of each thread color in the kit beside a hole, separate the threads then do an easy loop knot through the punched hole with the corresponding color. That way all my threads are together, and I can see at a glance the name. Once the kit is complete I save my thread cards and use the remaining threads for other projects.