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I was a bobbin girl but after reading some of the tips on organizing floss, I recently changed to the 'bag' system. I use 3x4 (I think) baggies and put them in a plastic shoe box with a cardboard divider between the 2 sides. Not sure how much I'm going to like it yet but so far, it's fairly simple to locate the floss I'm looking for and it saves tons of time not having to wind all that floss on bobbins. The only problem so far is that the bags are sooooo slippery. Plus, I'm afraid that my clumsy self will knock over the box and mix the bags up, which of course would be a tragedy!

I have mine in two plastic boxes on card, numbered in order. So easy to find and manage. And not too expensive. You can buy the boxes in any hobbie place.

Mine are on bobbin cards too.



For the dutchies: The box is from Xenos (4.99) and I got most of the cardboard cards at Pipoos, 100 for 2.25. I just got an extra box at Xenos because I suspect now that I've started cross stitching again I'm going to need it.

I used stitch bows for quite a while but I was always struggling to keep them neat somehow. I have 90 unused bows lying around and a bunch of inserts too....

I wind mine onto plastic bobbins. I bought a set of DMC number stickers but if I need an additional numbern label I have a label maker to create it on. I use a fishing tackle box to store them in. I recently upgraded to a larger tackle box as I had outgrown the original - my those things have gotten expensive. Good thing a family member works for a sporting goods store and I get to use his employee discount. When I start up a new project I pull the bobbins I'll use and put them on a metal ring in numberical order.

I was reading everybody's posts about floss organizing and I saw someone ask about a program or app to keep track of your thread inventory. I have an app on my phone called "Floss Checklist". I think I paid .99 for it. Its icon is a purple horse head. You enter in all the threads you have, which is time consuming at first, but then you click on "shopping list" and it produces a list of all the colors you don't have. Very handy when visiting Joanns or Michaels, I just whip out my phone and get some threads off the list. This app is for an Android phone, I'm not sure if they have it for Iphone or not.

Thanks Clarinda! I bought the app and put my list in it. Thankfully I've kept track of the list over time on my computer so I could get a list ordered by number to help inputting the colors.

One thing I forgot to mention, someone asked earlier about extra floss of the same color when you use bobbin cards. I've wound 2 threads on one card, if I have more than 2 I add an extra card for the same color. Because I use cardboard cards I'm not too worried about using extra cards and writing the numbers on them. This is all pre major cross stitching though so I might change my mind along the way!

Clarinda, I have that same app on my kindle. It's really great.

I've recently got back into cross stitching after not doing any for nearly 20 years. I did use the Lo Ran system but I didn't find it practical. I think I'm going to go with bobbins as that seems the most space saving system and less likely to get threads dusty.

X stitcher is the app I use for my phone. It's a godsend.

Clarinda wrote:I wind mine onto plastic bobbins. I bought a set of DMC number stickers but if I need an additional numbern label I have a label maker to create it on. I use a fishing tackle box to store them in. I recently upgraded to a larger tackle box as I had outgrown the original - my those things have gotten expensive. Good thing a family member works for a sporting goods store and I get to use his employee discount. When I start up a new project I pull the bobbins I'll use and put them on a metal ring in numberical order.

This is what I do! I inherited my moms tackle box with her floss from years and years ago. I also use the small hobby boxes with cardboard bobbins to use for kits. So, DMC goes in the fishing tackle box and everything else goes in the cheaper method.

i use the stitch bow system. it gets kind of pricey if you have all of the DMC colors, but i think it is worth it. it has these long skinny holders that you can slip the thread from its original skein size right on. then there are thesde plastic holders which they go into each holder holds 15 skein which you can then put in a binder.

Branlaadee wrote:Ugh..I hate bobbins. I refuse to bobbinate any floss anymore.

I have been using the floss-a-way bags. I put little stitckers with the name or number on the edge of the bag. I store them all in a photo box. What I did with my photo box is cut a piece of poster board about 2 inches wider than the box, bent the ends an inch in, and glued the posterboard down the middle of the box, width wise. So each box has 2 sections of baggies.

I just pull the bags when I am ready for a project and put them on a ring. I no longer worry about losing loose pieces of threads to my cats because they all go back in the bag. I no longer worry about the cats knocking over my bobbin box and running off with all my bobbins because they dont care about the baggies.

The baggies are also awsome for blended floss. I put a post-it on the inside of each baggy with the chart symbol and the color numbers, and then I put precut lengths of each color in the bag.

I love those Floss-Away bags as well But I only use them for work in progress. All other skeins of thread are in number order in plastic boxes. For threads in use, I stick a label on the outside of each bag with colour number, chart symbol, and colour name. I bag up all the colours for the project, linked together on the rings, but the baggies of colours immediately needed for the section of chart I'm working, go into a little box on my workstation. Works for me. I've tried bobbins and stitchbows and suchlike, but couldn't get on with 'em - there's no place to keep the workable short ends of thread with their colour.

I have all my threads organised by numbers in big ringbinders and just take out the ones I need. I want to try something new buy don't know what would work

My DIY storage for threads (for about 30 colors).

Well being new to both cross stitching and this forum I must say a huge thanks for all the helpful advice. Organising my floss was a big issue. I've gone with the floss away bags. Bought a bundle of 100 and then inserted little cards inside each with the DMC number and colour word for the threads I already have.

Then arranged the cards in numerical order in a plastic storage box with lid.
Seems to be working a treat so far.

I'm doing plastic bobbins in a storage box. I like it so far. I'm just writing the DMC number at the top of the bobbin, and I can easily see them when they're all lined up.

One of my WIP's is a kit, so I'm keeping that thread separate, in a ziplock bag.

Of course, I don't have that much thread yet, and I've only been back to cross stitching for a couple of weeks, so it's very possible that my system will change.

I store mine on cardboard bobbins and keep them in a multi drawer plastic box I bought from Hobbycraft.

I'm a bobbin girl too. As soon as I get new floss, it gets bobbinated onto the plastic bobbins and into the plastic divider boxes numbered in order. I use a fine tip sharpie to write DMC on one side of the hole and the number on the other side of the hole. I have about 12 boxes full of DMC, and about 4 for Anchor threads and the DMC effects floss or other special ones. I'm trying to get my collection complete with at least one of every DMC color. I only put one skein per bobbin and just line them together in the order if I have more than one of a color. I also label the end of the boxes with the number of the first color in the box to the last number so I can quickly find the box with the color I need.
For WIP, I put them in a separate box just for that project in order of numbers. When I do a few stitches with a color and have some left on the needle, I just slip the needle under the floss on the bobbin and wrap the end around the bobbin. This way I don't waste floss and it's already threaded on a needle. ( This is when there are too many colors for my Pako.) And I buy needles around 90 at a time so I have enough for each WIP.
If I am working a kit, I bobbinate the floss and slip a piece of paper with the symbol and number or color name on the end of it under the floss sticking up so I can easily see it in the box. This way, when I finish the kit, I just unwind any unused floss and throw it away, unless it's DMC, and I haven't marked up my plastic bobbins and I can reuse them for another kit.

I recently bought 4 new bobbin boxes and they came with very flimsy cardboard bobbins- 100 per box. Well I had about 7 boxes of generic, no name floss which I had put onto plastic bobbins. My DMC collection has grown immensely, so I rebobbinated the generics onto the flimsy bobbins and sold them in one giant lot and recovered hundreds of plastic bobbins-yay!

I also keep one plastic bobbin as a template and if I run out of plastic bobbins and can't get them right away, I trace around the bobbin with a pencil onto sturdy cardboard and cut it out and use them the same way.

One word of warning, I've just discovered, I have a number of DMC plastic bobbins as well as some cardboard and other brand ones, the other day I found that I'd rubbed off the number of one of the DMC bobbins by handling it a number of times, it was written on with a colored sharpie but black permanent finewriters also don't take really great. The cardboard ones aren't likely to rub off, so I think I'm sticking to cardboard, also because I now put the symbols on for HAED charts so it's cheaper to replace the bobbin card with a new one when necessary.

karen4bells wrote:
karenstitches, I find that if I cut the DMC number from the label and then tape it to the plastic bobbin the number will stay for ages and ages!! I make sure to trim neatly around the number, so it's nice and small and then I tape so that the tape itself covers both sides of the bobbin. I usually make the tape long enough to go midway down the bobbin, and the ends of the tape end up covered by the floss when I wind it

.... this is exactly what I do, too.... I have all the DMC colors and keep all the bobbins in a plastic organizer box with compartments arranged numerically for easy referencing. Extra skeins are in zip lock bags. I have been used to this system ever since I started stitching back in 1998.