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How I Store and Organize My Embroidery Thread

embridery thread storage cover

This week I’m on vacation. While I’m gone I’m showing off my new super-tidy sewing room, and sharing my solutions to some common craft supply storage challenges. Yesterday I shared how I store and organize all my favorite sewing tools. Today I’ll show you my embroidery thread.

I struggled with organizing my embroidery floss for a long time. A couple of years ago a reader suggested storing each color in a ziplock bag and IT TOTALLY WORKED. I love it, and I posted about it here.

I still use the same basic system to organize my thread, but I’ve made a couple of changes in the last year. Most of the thread I use is matched to one of my wool felt colors, so I bagged those up with the wool color AND the DMC thread # written on the label, like this. . .

How I organize my embroidery thread

 

Then I put all of those baggies on one binder ring, so all my felt colors are together in one place.

How I organize my embroidery thread

The rest of my thread is bundled by color and kept in a shoebox – just like I described in the other post.

So that’s my embroidery thread! Tomorrow – fabric!

Best,
Wendi
That's me!

 

10 COMMENTS

  1. Karen Walker SAYS...

    Great idea. Maybe it could be organized using a color wheel. I think I’ll try this; and for my beads. Thank you for the great idea,

    • One of the things I like best about the method is that it’s easy to organize them in whatever way works best for you. When I made the switch to mostly felt embroidery, it took about five minutes to reorganize my stash in a new way.

  2. Wendy McMahon SAYS...

    I love, love, love this idea. I do have one question, what kind of bag did you use? Was it just a snack bag? Again I love your idea.

    • I started out just using snack bags, but once I knew I loved the system and was going to stick with it I bought the Floss-A-Way bags. That little writing surface they have on them is really nice.

      • Jeanne Marie Wallace SAYS...

        I’am so happy that I started this traning here with your site, I have learned something new already and so glald I saw this,Thank you for showing me something I have missed and should have taken years ago. thank you I will a better sewer because of you. Jeanne Marie

  3. Deb SAYS...

    How do I get more of these bags

    • I don’t carry them, but I’m sure you can still find them. Just try a Google search.

  4. Avam Inocencio SAYS...

    Great idea, I used a rod to hang my ringed plastic bags per color while working. I had the floss handy beside my work. I just used a stool to hang the rod end to end.

  5. Leslie D. Schmidt SAYS...

    I was doing counted cross stitch back in the 80s, and this is how I have been storing my threads since then. I also got the cardboard boxes that were sold with the bags. They are a little like the size of shoe boxes with a red gingham design on them. I have 4 of them, and have included specialty threads as well as embroidery floss in my boxes. Because I did cross stitch, I most often searched my threads by number, so keeping them organized that way was the most logical for me. I would gather the ones I needed for a project and slip them on a ring (or more.) Very convenient. They also hold the unused portion of a strand.

  6. Joyce A Eans SAYS...

    I have Floss Away bags sorted by numbers (100s, 600s, Sampler, etc.), and I store them on the pole of an upright paper towe holder; takes up much less room that other storage options. When viewed from above, this looks kind of like a flower; I call it my “floss blossom!”