The bit I'm talking about is that white rectangle on the right side of my pencil box. It is my home made 'pako' needle organizer. It is simply a Mr Clean magic eraser (floral foam might work equally well.. I don't think a regular cleaning sponge has the rigidness to hold up, but it might!) that I use to hold needles that are threaded with colors that are not in use at the moment. I cut a piece of scrap paper to the same size as the magic eraser, and using a pencil draw on the symbols as needed. When I finish using a color while parking, if I'll need it at all in the near future, rather than putting it away, I snip it and park it needle and all in my needle holder. I can draw the symbols as I go, adding each one as it is needed, rather than taking up space by having a space for every symbol pre-drawn the way a pako does, which would take up too much space.
The other thing I do is that as I start a confetti heavy area, I look ahead and find all the colors that are needed within it and make sure that for each color that I don't already have parked and in work I have needles threaded for in advance. That way I am not stopping every few stitches to pull a new thread from my working threads. It makes the work a lot less of stopping and starting, and lets me stitch faster as a result since I get into a rhythm.
Eventually as I reuse colors that have been parked here I end up with lots of gaps, or the paper gets filled up with symbols. At that point I grab another sponge, redraw and consolidate the needles that are left on this one, and start over. This picture was taken right after consolidating everything from another sponge where I had loads of gaps and it was starting to look chaotic and messy so I tidied it up.
The best part about this is that it is practically FREE. I had the sponges at home already, and the paper on top is just scraps out of the recycle bin. Actually, reciepts work well since they tend to be about the right width, so I just trim them to length. The magic eraser is firm enough that I can write on the paper on it with a pencil to draw the symbol easily as long as I don't press TOO hard.
I've considered getting myself another pencil box like the one in the picture and fitting multiple sponges into the bottom and just creating a single larger surface where I could simply park every color. But for now I don't have enough needles anyway so it's a moot point. I need to get more size 28s!
I hope this tip will help out someof you who want to get the pakos but don't want the expense of one, or give ideas to some of you on ways to deal with projects that have lots of colors.
)
But that's splitting hairs. Well thought out solution.
