Tangled Thread - Tips, Trick and Tutorials in Sewing & Stitching

Stash- floss and threads

by Deb on May 6th, 2006

For several years now I have used cardboard or plastic bobbins, and plastic bobbin boxes, to store my DMC flosses. I have the worst luck trying to just pull floss from the skein without it knotting, and when I started using the bobbins/boxes I didn’t even know there might be other storage systems available. This is ok, because I like my bobbins. So far I haven’t had any major issues with kinks in the threads when I stitch, the boxes keep all the bobbins organized and clean, and it’s a pretty cheap way to organize.

Using the silk floss the other day on my Lorri’s Needlecase project, got me to thinking. If I were investing in purchasing entire skeins of silk floss, how would I go about storing it? I think it would inevitably snag on bobbins (plastic or cardboard), and just from looking at the Stitch Bows in the store, I think it would snag on them too. I think for the specialty flosses, I would either use a bobbin box with dividers removed so the skeins could simply lay in the box in long narrow compartments (though the floss might snag on rough spots); or I would use a plastic bag system - whether purchasing the made-for-flosses bags, or buying a box of sandwich bags and sticker labels.

Ideally, I’d put each skein into a small plastic bag, labelled; and all the bags into a hard-sided container, such as a larger plastic box or a pretty tin. Plastic bags don’t stack tidily, and they tend to slide around no matter how you try to get them to behave. I’m giving these things thought now, so that when I get to projects in my stash that call for the more expensive specialty fibers, flosses and threads, I can hopefully already have the containers in which to store them. Yard/garage/rummage sale season is underway for a lot of us in the US, and sometimes you can find the nicest things for very little money. Of course, why settle for plastic if you can con someone into getting you a solid hardwood utility chest?

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POSTED IN: Floss and Thread, Stash, Tools and Accessories, thoughts