Once upon a time I cross stitched....a lot. Helped me through 2 pregnancies where I was confined to bed, was kind of compact, and it was like painting, but with thread. I haven't really cross stitched much the last few years, but as stated in this post I am a bit behind on a family tradition which I began, so I need to get a going.
1. I have 5 or 6 of those big floss containers, that contains the little plastic or cardboard bits that you wind a skein of embroidery floss on and use it to stitch. I started with one container, and the floss that is on the skeins is based upon whichever project I was working on so there colors are in a random order. Which means that when I want to work on something I am digging through a bunch of bins to find the correct colors.
Problem 2? I wanted to use a color that was a tone or two lighter than another when I was embroidering so checked the DMC website and guess what? There was not a color lighter, so I was looking at another site trying to figure out what color was lighter, and close to what I wanted to do.
I have a loose leaf notebook where I had separate pages with the colors laid out and the floss colors, and the number of my floss card, but DMC is always adding new colors, and removing some (OK I have some antique floss which has colors that are not listed anywhere from DMC 805 which is almost a dark teal color.)
I decided instead to throw it all on a spreadsheet.
There one small area of my life kind of organized. Next is to move all the cross stitch, embroidery stuff upstairs and to get DH to move the easy chair from the sitting room into the boys old room. He is afraid he will never find me if I have another room to hide in.
I think embroidery thread is one of the hardest things to organize - I do it one way, then another. I was very lucky to find a real DMC wooden chest with drawers being sold by a craft store going out of business. I have mine in there by color families. If I'm working on a project I get each one out and hang it on a metal ring that opens and closes. That way the threads for each project are together and I can grab them easily. blessings, marlene
ReplyDeleteyou are so smart. I have a lot of that thread too from the years I did cross stitch. I was surprised recently how many colors have been added.
ReplyDeleteHahaha! I know what you mean about another room to hide in! My hubby calls my sewing studio my Ivory Tower :*) I used to do cross stitch too and made samples for the local shop, so I ended up with tons of flosses. They are in the same type boxes you have, but thankfully they are already in numerical order. Nowadays my daughter uses them more than I do.
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