I have a lot of hand embroidery threads. Mostly this is a good thing because I have a lot of options when I stitch. I had them all neatly organized in drawers by color . . . for maybe a minute.

The thing is, the drawers are all downstairs in the studio. My studio is great for all my arts and crafts and machine sewing. I just don’t do hand embroidery down there.

What I ended up doing, is putting hands full of threads into a basket with whatever cloth I was stitching on because I haven’t been doing planned projects. But that limited my options without going up and down the stairs as I stitched, which is not conducive to embroidering. It was also making a mess of the threads.

Some time ago, when I was having problems with the loose ends of my perle 8 spools tangling, I hit on a good solution. I now keep my perle 8 spools in acorn pods (those plastic thingies in vending machines that hold little toys or candies). The two inch pods are the perfect size and half is clear enough to see the color I want.

When I was frustrated a couple of weeks ago by the various non pull skeins getting tangled and losing the paper with the number, I thought “I should put them in the acorn pods, too!” That way I’d be able to toss them into a large “thread box” ^* with the perle 8 and baggies of floss.

Theoretically, it works fine. Practically, there is a problem. The acorn pods take up too much room. There isn’t much difference between a perle 8 spool and a pod. But a pod could hold two (maybe three) skeins of perle 3 or 5.

After thinking more about it, my final solution is floss bobbins.

As you can see, the perle 5 makes a slightly over sized bobbin. I’m hoping that the X wrap at the end of the thread will keep it from unravelling and making a mess. Only time will tell how well it will work.

Eventually, I hope to sort all the bobbins by color groups on rings and be able to toss them ALL into the box to tote wherever I am stitching.

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• The “thread box” is a plastic file box, maybe about 15″ or 18″ square