How to Organise Your Thread Skeins (and Never Despair Again)

It starts with three skeins in a little basket and, before you know it, you've got a nest of tangled colours where you can never find the one you want. If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Organising your threads isn't fussiness: it's what makes sitting down to stitch a pleasure rather than a treasure hunt. Here's how.

The classic method: bobbins and a box

The system lifelong stitchers use — and there's a reason for that:

• Wind each skein onto a card or plastic bobbin. Goodbye tangles, forever.
• Write the DMC number on each bobbin. This is the step most people skip and the most important one: without a number, one blue looks an awful lot like another blue.
• Store them in an organiser box with compartments, sorted by number. So when a pattern asks for 798, you go straight to it.

Sort them so that YOU can find them

There are two schools and both are valid:

• By DMC number: ideal if you stitch from patterns, because you search by number.
• By colour family: all the reds together, all the blues together. More visual and pretty, perfect if you choose your own colours.

Neither is better than the other: pick the one that suits how you stitch.

Handy little tricks

• Rings for projects in progress: put only the colours for the piece you're stitching now onto a ring. Everything's together and you're not rummaging through the whole box.
• Label the leftovers too: those bits of thread you can't bring yourself to throw away. A little bag with its number and you'll use them for small details.
• Keep them away from damp and sun: moisture damages thread and sunlight fades the colours over time.

In short

Bobbin, number written down and a tidy box: that's 90% of it done. A well-organised thread collection isn't just practical, it's a joy to look at. And when you want to grow it, there are 286 colours waiting for you in our range of DMC threads.