Best Organizational Idea EVER!

When I first started using my sewing machine last year, I was amazed that I could not find a way to organize my thread so that my spools could be stored alongside my bobbins. 

If you don't use a sewing machine, you may not realize that stitches are made through the combined contributions of thread from a spool and a bobbin.  It blew my mind that there was no storage box that kept spools and bobbins of the same color next to one another. 

If I used several shades of blue, for example, I had to be very careful that I didn't mix one shade of blue on a spool with another shade of blue on a bobbin.  There are storage boxes for spools and storage boxes for bobbins, but not storage boxes to keep spools and bobbins together! 

I asked my mother, who has sewed for a lifetime, as well as the woman at the store where my mother purchased my sewing machine to make sure I wasn't crazy, and they both confirmed that no such storage box exists. 

My question set my mother to thinking, though, and she came up with a wonderful solution.  She gave me a supply of plastic bags intended for embroidery floss, each one with a hole punched in the corner.  She also gave me some binder rings.  She reasoned that I could store the bobbin and spool of each color in a separate plastic bag, and keep them all together with the binder ring.

Brilliant!

And, if I do say so myself, I took it one step further in brilliance by finding a necklace holder to keep the bags at the ready next to my sewing machine.

(Other possibilities to do this job:  banana holders--crazy things!--and coffee mug holders.)

The other thing that baffles my mind about the thread I use is that each spool has a sticker on the end of it with a number that identifes the color.  When I insert it into my machine, a hole is poked through the sticker, and it is often impossible to read the number.  When the time comes to replace the color, I have to guess which exact shade I had been using.  Craziness!

With these plastic bags, I will be able to use a permanent marker to write the number on the bag as soon as I put the spool and bobbin inside, and there will be no more mysteries when it comes time to replace a color.

I can't even tell you how much pleasure my little thread organizer brings me when I walk into my craft room or sit down at  my sewing machine for a project.

Many thanks to my mom for her continued organizing brilliance!