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In a newsletter a couple of weeks ago, I showed you all how I organize my embroidery thread. It’s not perfect, and I asked you to tell me your methods. Wendi (not me, though I admire her spelling flair) from SewCatSew shared her method and I’ve decided that she is a genius. I’m going to adopt her method as soon as I get some of these little baggies. Here’s what she had to say. . .

Here’s a picture of my “system”.  I bought a 100-pack of Floss-A-Way bags YEARS ago.  Recently I took it up a notch by getting colored rings and sorting all my floss by color family.  I now have a ring for each color range in order from light to dark (for the most part).  I can toss them in my basket and easily pull out the group I need.  I also have a ring for the colors that are custom matched to the felt I use from a particular supplier.  The bags are labeled by DMC color number and the felt color name so I’m sure to get the right one when I want an exact match.  When I’m working on a project with multiple colors I can also take the bags I need from their color group ring and put them on a ring of their own for the duration of the project rather than go back to the basket every time I want a different thread.

I’ve seen the bags sell for as little as $3.49 or 100 (JoAnn Fabric), I got the basket at the Target dollar section and probably paid $2-3 for the rings.  So for about $7-8 I got a flexible, usable way to feel like I’m in control of SOMEthing  🙂

I LOVE this! The major drawback to my system is that it isn’t very portable. That’s especially irritating because one of the things I love about embroidery is its portability! Wendi was even kind enough to send a link to a few sources for the baggies (that’s an affiliate link) though I think I can do this same thing with some snack-sized ziplocks from my grocery store, a sharpie and a hole punch.

(Updated to note – the names and numbers were hard to read on the clear bags so I invested in the Floss-Away bags and they were worth every penny.)

I already have a bunch of the binder rings left over from a camp bookbinding project I taught last summer. I can’t wait! Organizing my craft supplies sometimes makes me giddy – in a good way. 🙂

I wrote up a new post about a year later showing a couple of small modifications to this system. Years later, this is still the system I use. You can read it here.