Step-by-Step Storage Solution for Thread Bobbins

You will need:

Card Stock

Pencil

Ruler

Glue

Bulldog clips or pegs 

Cutting board

Craft knife

Folding Tool (optional)

Measure Twice - cut once!

Make four cuts Shown as to form the ends of each tray

I scored and folded along the lines and then glued the ends in place. I then left the bulldog clips in place for a few minutes to help stick the pieces together.

And this is the finished article. 

I found this quick and easy to do and it gave me the result I needed without costing a fortune. 

Now I love using my DMC thread box!

DMC Thread Box Solution for those of us who use Bobbins!

I've had my gorgeous wooden DMC thread box for a while now. As an item I love it and would never part with it but in practice I find it a real pain to use. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the box it is made of wood and features five drawers and a lift-up lid that reveals compartments of different sizes. Each drawer comes with vertical dividers that can be slotted into place. Each compartment is then the right size to hold skeins. All good - except that I don't keep my thread in skeins. 

I wind my thread onto cardboard bobbins and the width of each compartment is too narrow to hold two rows of bobbins but too large to hold just one. I started to put duplicates at the side but the bobbins had a tendency to move around. This is a real pain as I store them in numerical order. It also wasted huge amounts of precious space. What to do?

I thought about reverting to my original plastic boxes or the wooden boxes that I started to use in 2014 (see early posts) but it seemed such a shame not to use the DMC box for DMC threads. 

I decided to try my hand at simple cartonnage. 

After a few false starts I designed and made a simple tray from white cardboard. I made it a few millimetres shorter than the width of the drawer and just a few millimetres wider than each bobbin. Just enough to make it easy to get the bobbins in and out but tight enough to stop the bobbins from moving around. 

I found that I could now fit 9 trays in each drawer and 20+ bobbins in each tray. Suddenly, I had enough room to store my duplicate threads and some tools in the box too... 

I'll share my step-by-step guide to making this inexpensive storage solution next time.

Craft Room Storage 

Now anyone who is familiar with my Pinterest boards will know that I absolutely adore old library catalogue storage units, antique printer drawers and apothecary drawer units. 

I've now been fortunate enough to find something similar for my craft room. 

I recently purchased an antique pine drawer unit on a well known auction site. The drawer unit is quite narrow (only 30cm deep) and stands a little less than a metre tall. It has five rows of 4 drawers and originally featured little pine knobs on each drawer but I've now replaced them with old fashioned bronze cup handles with space for labels. 

I wanted the right look for the labels and so I had some fun searching for a free typewriter font. After a few false starts I found the one I liked and made some labels...

Would you like a sneak peek inside?!

Gorgeous Tree of Life 

This pattern has also been taken from Barbara Hammet's wonderful book on Elizabethan Cross Stitch. It is still my favourite book on cross stitch. 

If you don't have access to the book you'll be pleased to hear that large portions of it, including this gorgeous pattern, have been reproduced in well known cross stitch magazines. The Tree of Life featured in Issue 113 of the Cross Stitch Collection dated January 2005.