Embroidery Thread Organization - Cereal Box Cardboard

Embroidery Floss Organizers from Cereal Boxes

I use embroidery thread or floss in many projects. Unlike sewing thread which comes on a spool, embroidery floss comes in little looped bunches. As soon as you pull off some floss for a project, the nice looped bunch becomes a tangled mess. This mess is increased because embroidery floss comes with six strands, and for most projects, you use a subset of those strands such as one, two or three of them, depending on the thickness of your project.

Many kids love to make friendship bracelets from embroidery floss and that gets messy… quickly. This is how embroidery floss looks when you use it avidly:

Disorganized embroidery floss - needs a thread organizer!
Disorganized embroidery floss – needs a thread organizer!

In my usual Trashmagination way, I want to avoid waste, so I want to be able to quickly scan my collection of floss – to find the color that I want instead of starting a new loop. So I took my messy floss collection and organized them using a simple system made from cardboard rectangles.

There are plastic organizers that you can purchase that have a series of holes punched in them, and in theory, you can loop the leftover bits of floss through those hoops. But even then, the bits hanging off the organizer often get tangled.

Other folks take small pieces of cardboard or plastic, called “bobbin cards,” and wrap their leftover floss around them one color at a time, then store them in a plastic container by color. This crafter figured out how to speed up wrapping her bobbins by using a power drill!

Another crafter wrapped her leftover floss around clothespins. This was kind of neat because you use the pinchy part of the clothespin to hold the end of your floss.

Embroidery artist Richard Saja organizes his embroidery floss with binder clips.

I group the floss bits by color so I can quickly find the scraps I need.

I keep full-sized new bunches of floss separate, and only look in that bag if I can’t find what I need in my rectangle system.

Embroidery Thread Organization - Cereal Box Cardboard
Embroidery Thread Organization – Cereal Box Cardboard

How do you keep your embroidery floss organized?