In this episode I chat a little bit about week 6 of the stitch along, I share some popular ways to organise your embroidery floss and share a pattern of the week.

Key links and resources 

• My Facebook group where the stitch along is happening.
• My Pinterest board with some floss organisation pins.
• My Instagram profile.
• This weeks pattern of the week.

Inspiration for the episode 

Over the past year I have been on a de-cluttering and organising mission of my home but I’ve neglected this aspect of my work. Now that the rush of Christmas is arriving I really need to get organised! Every Saturday I have dedicated a bit of time to organising my craft room and I share peeks in my Instagram story. 

The Christmas Stitch Along

We are up to week 6 and this week we are stitching the 4 gingerbread men. Stitching these has really made me want to bake some too! I’ve never baked gingerbread even though I worked in cake shops for 6 years. If you have a fool proof recipe I’d love to hear it! You can share it in the comments below or come and join my Facebook group! This is where the stitch along is taking place but we also chat about all things cross stitch and crafts.

Organising your floss

There are many ways to organise your floss and I don’t think there’s any perfect way; it totally depends on how much floss you have and how much space you have. I have a Pinterest board with lots of pins on what I’m about to talk about today. Organised floss photos make for a great pin!

I’m going to start with my personal least favourite ways (which seem to be the most popular with everyone else) and that is winding around pegs and bobbins.

The reason I don’t like organising this way is because first of all, it takes ages to wind all the floss around the bobbins or pegs. And secondly, it leaves kinks in your floss which doesn’t look very professional and as I sell my kits I need them to be as professional as possible.

However, this is a good way to organise your floss if you’re just storing it for personal use (and you have the time). It still stitches fine and they make for fabulous Instagram friendly photos - particularly the pegs which I know some people like to decorate with washi tape. I only use bobbins now myself for photo props.

Another good thing about using paper bobbins is that they then fit in a bobbin box. Bobbin boxes have little square compartments in them to store your wound up bobbins (any other mums got that song in your head yet?). But in lots of boxes you can take out the plastic insides of the box to make longer compartments which are the perfect size for storing full skeins of thread. Unfortunately there are usually only about 5 compartments but I tend to store 2 contrasting colours per compartment; so black and white in one, green and orange in another etc. However, this is currently how my bobbin box look so this isn’t the main way I organise my floss.

The way I organise my floss now is tying it on to thick card stock. First I match the card to the floss colour so baby pink card is used for floss colour 3689 (also baby pink). Then I print the numbers down the sides of the card and hole punch where the numbers are and tie on the thread! This way makes it really easy for me to find the colour I need and keeps the floss straight and untangled which is perfect for my kits.

A new way I want to try is organising it on a spool rack. I only recently seen this idea from Sublime Stitching and you can check out the photo on the Pinterest board I was chatting about earlier.

The way this works is that you take the floss out of the plastic casing and wind it around your fingers and place it on the prongs on the rack. If you aren’t confident with the numbers and colours of floss you can put the plastic casings on the prongs too! I love this idea and it is something that would be quite easy to create at home. I am currently on the hunt for a spool rack!

My dream vision of storing floss is on a peg board. This sounds simple but the one I have seen on Pinterest is huge and has metal poles in it full of hanging skeins of thread. This is the kind of thing you would expect to find in a needlecraft shop but it is also possible to create at home if you had the space. You could buy a few pegboards, paint them and hang them on a wall next to each other to create a bigger one.

And of course, you could just throw all of your floss in a box which is actually what I used to do for a while but this is extremely time consuming when you have to dig through the pile of tangled thread to find the colour you need.

Pattern of the week

This weeks pattern is from Not So Modern Millie and is called Pinecone Monogram. It is quite a new pattern and is completely perfect for Autumn and Christmas. The colours are mustards, browns and reds and it has flowers, berry’s and of course pinecones in it. It works really well for table runners and stockings and you can see photos of this over on Etsy where your can download the pattern. I am really hoping to stitch this one over Christmas, I just need to decide what to stitch it on!

If you like to live a simpler life and don’t like to store loads of floss, you can shop for my kits which have only the colours you need in for that kit, meaning you don’t have to buy and store all the floss - you will just have what you need!

So, how do you organise and store your floss? Let me know in the comments below! Or share a photo over on social media and tag #hannahhandmakes so I can see.

Happy stitching! 

Hannah x