Ready Thread Go

When I first moved into this house (almost 2 years ago now!), I unpacked my sewing supplies and called it done. But I really didn't organize a lot of it to my liking. Since I haven't been sewing regularly for a while, I just grimace through it when I do dust off the machines. But my thread was irritating me just a bit too much and I realized it's been a mental roadblock keeping me from sewing more. So I decided that today was the day I would finally tackle it instead of forever searching the rows for the right color, or more likely, just ignoring sewing altogether. 

It only took a couple of hours and it's not like I haven't been inside this house most of the last year with time on my hands, so I don't know why the procrastination, but I'm guessing we've all accumulated a lot of those feelings lately so I'm not going to offer any specific excuse except to say, oh well. 

I meant to take a pic before I started pulling spools off, but whoops. I did remember after pulling off the whites and browns. 

And here are the racks completely empty. Same as when I was in my rental house, I hung the racks using Command Velcro strips. I love those for this. First, no doors are harmed, and second (and almost as important), no measuring is needed to get everything lined up. I've found that using the Command strips on some painted walls hasn't turned out as well, but a wall is a lot easier to fix than a hole in a door.  

I pulled off all the spools and arranged them in groups of colors on a blanket pulled across my bed (which is about 5 steps from the door). Also, see my treadle makeup table? I really don't have room for it anywhere else but I also don't want to get rid of it. Makeup table it is. Although what IS makeup anymore?

And then I stared at the piles for a while, trying to decide how I wanted them to run into each other. 

In the end, I went with whites/beiges at the top, going into grays and then blues, greens, black, yellows, pinks, reds, oranges. I ended up with empty rows for expansion and weird stuff on the bottom row like nylon thread, fusible thread, etc. Because of my coverstitch machine, I tend to buy multiples of the same colors. For many of those, I use straws over the pegs so I can stack spools. For basics, like blacks, whites, grays, and browns, I keep them single so I have room to expand within a color range using the straws if needed but without having to move the entire collection of spools up or down. 

And since we're on thread, serger cones are kept in 2 drawers of an IKEA unit under my machine table. 

And bobbins in Bobbin Savers behind my sewing machine. 

 

And that's probably more than you wanted to know about my thread.

I have a pattern printed and taped together, but I don't think I have fabric in the house that is suitable. So, another small project today will be getting into some fabric bins in the garage. I actually got rid of a lot of fabric when I moved so I'm not even sure what's out there, but I really, really do NOT want to turn looking in those bins into another organization project. I think I'll take my phone out there and just take some general pics so I have some record of what's there and call it done. 

It's The Little Things

You probably already know that this is a thread rack. But what you may not know is that it's a tiny thread rack, costing about $3.50 from Nancy's Notions. When I saw it, I was in love and I bought it pronto!

This is where I sew.



My machines are spaced along a 6-ft counter. Generally, it's more than enough room. Except, as I sew I tend to accumulate "clutter" to the right of the sewing machine. Things like the 2-3 presser feet I'm switching between during a project, my thread snippers, different spools of thread for different parts of a project, and more. And then, if I have to move to the coverstitch machine on the far right, my garment gets laid over the top of that pile of clutter and invariably something slips to the floor or I have to hunt underneath for my snips. This drives me NUTS as I'm usually a very organized person. A place for everything and everything in its place.

The little thread rack arrived yesterday. This morning, I couldn't wait to get to the sewing room to get things in order. Now the space between the sewing machine and coverstitch machine looks like this:



The white basket to the left of the thread rack isn't a new addition, It's always been there. It holds my most-often used notions. Things like tweezers, my "stick", bodkins, seam ripper, buttonhole cutter, screwdriver, lint brush, etc. But now the mini thread rack is also in place and it's currently holding the spools of thread for a project in process, a spool of white thread that's almost used up but has too much thread left to toss, same for a cone of serger thread, topstitching thread for a pair of DS's jeans that need repair, and a couple of straws holding matching bobbins that I don't want to "file" away with the rest of the bobbins yet, lest I forget which one matches which.

Also added today was another little white basket that will "float" between the two machines. I'll toss the in-use presser feet and needle cases** in there, along with my pin cushion. Then, when I need to move to the coverstitch machine, all I'll have to do is move that little basket aside instead of gathering up each piece of clutter individually.

**I leave the whole needle case out so that I can tell at a glance what needle is in my machine. When I switch needle types, I put the previous case away and put the new case out.

Yeah, I'm probably a bit OCD about all of this, but for now, I'm feeling very pleased with the results.