Ranking All the Ways I’ve Stored Embroidery Thread

I orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished this in my newslet­ter, Orts. Sub­scribe to read my essays and get inspir­ing links to you sent every oth­er week.

I have a lot of embroi­dery thread and a small house, so stor­age is at a pre­mi­um. But there’s a problem—I’m also extreme­ly picky about the ways I orga­nize my thread. I want it to look good! I want it to vibe with my decor! Some­times, this is eas­i­er said than done. But after many years of stitch­ing, I think I’ve found a solu­tion that works for me. Let me know your favorite ways of stor­ing thread over on Bluesky. I’m @brwnpaperbag.com!

How do you store your embroidery thread? Here, I’m ranking five of the ways I’ve organized my thread (or not organized it) throughout the years.

5. Wound back and forth in my fingers

Aes­thet­ics: High. It’s very dreamy. It looks like some­thing out of a magazine.
Effec­tive­ness: Very, very low. I didn’t tag the thread, so I wasn’t com­plete­ly sure which col­or was which. (Know­ing the exact col­ors has become extreme­ly impor­tant as I cre­ate DIY kits and pat­terns and work on cus­tom pet por­traits.)

4. Wrapped around wooden clothespins

Aes­thet­ics: Turns out it wasn’t exact­ly my style
Effec­tive­ness: Mid. Wood­en clothes pins are inex­pen­sive, and you can write the thread col­or num­ber onto them with a per­ma­nent mark­er. But, they’re bulky—especially com­pared to plas­tic thread bobbins—and I just stored them in a bas­ket. I’ve seen them more effec­tive when hung on a peg­board, but I don’t have the space for that.

3. On plastic bobbins, on a metal ring

Aes­thet­ics: Pleas­ing when they’re first put on the ring. Not so much in practice
Effec­tive­ness: Mid­dle of the road. The large met­al ring does a good job of keep­ing the plas­tic bob­bins togeth­er. This is great when trav­el­ing. But the longer I work on a project, the more unruly the ring looks. There are loose pieces of thread, and it tends to come unwound and a chal­lenge to work with.

2. On plastic bobbins, in storage boxes

Aes­thet­ics: Not my favorite. I don’t like hav­ing a bunch of plas­tic everywhere.
Effec­tive­ness: Extreme­ly effec­tive. That’s why I’m rank­ing this so high on my list. Plas­tic bob­bins in stor­age box­es are the most orga­nized way I store my thread. I do it by col­or fam­i­lies, not num­bers. I don’t love how the stor­age box­es look, but I’ve been able to make them a lit­tle more palat­able by cov­er­ing them in stickers.

1. On plastic bobbins, in old candle containers and vintage vessels

Aes­thet­ics: The best! They help set the over­all vibe of my workspace.
Effec­tive­ness: Less effec­tive than the stor­age box­es, but the vibes take them to the top of my list. I like Pad­dy­wax can­dles because they come in con­tain­ers meant to be reused—that’s how I got the idea to start using them for thread stor­age. From there, I’ve col­lect­ed some vin­tage dish­es that com­ple­ment the can­dle containers.
I like to divvy up the con­tain­ers in a cou­ple of ways: one is by project and the oth­er is by col­or. If I’m not using a thread col­or, I’ll put it in a stor­age box until I need it again.

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