embroidery part 2

Here is a rundown of what I did today:

Bad things:

Ate a Twix bar at lunch.

Went to Michael's again. (Not that bad)

Spent more money at Michael's. (Bad)

Good:

Ate an apple with lunch (thereby cancelling out the Twix bar)

Read books and played choo-choo with Sawyer for a long time.

Cleaned out my email.

Oh yeah, and this:

It took at least 6 hours, about a gallon of patience and approximately $10. So if you have the 6 hours and gallon of patience (I had to quantify how much patience you will actually need for this. It's a lot.), then this is a cheap project to do.

Why write a post about this? Uhm, hello! Do you see how beautiful all this embroidery thread looks lined up and color coded? So pretty. 

Another reason to post about organizing thread: To share with you the genuis method for winding these bobbins that Anderson and I came up with. Ready for it? Hm? Promise not to laugh? ok...

Ok you can laugh. We did. Many times. Every once in a while one of us would chuckle and say "Look at us." (Translation: "What the heck - we are sitting at home watching Dancing with the Stars using a rigged up power drill to wind a million skeins of embroidery thread onto tiny cards. Really. So. Cool.")

Anyways - here is the quick how to. 

What you'll need:

1. Boxes ($2.49 each). They are in the embroidery aisle of Michael's, and they come with 50 of the little white card things to wrap your thread around.

2. Bobbin winder ($2.99).

3. A power drill - Say wha??

4. Mind-rotting television to help pass the time. My personal choice was Dancing with the Stars on Monday and Biggest Loser/the Voice on Tuesday. I am all love/hate with those two shows. Love seeing what happens and watching to corniness and drama, hate that I am not doing something better with my mind.

 

Take the little bobbin winder and pop the pieces apart. Mine didn't have glue or screws or anything holding it together, so we just pulled the pieces apart. 

Take any drill bits out of your drill, insert the plastic piece, and tighten it up. 

Unwind your thread into a loose pile before you wind it with the drill. It knots up very easily so if you already have it loosely pulled apart it is less likely to knot. 

Wrap your thread around a few times to get it started. 

  Turn on your drill and wind it up. If your drill is fully charged it takes about 5 seconds. If you kill the drill battery like I did, it goes a little slower, but still saves you all the work of having to hand wind it. 

Keep going and going and use up your entire gallon of patience til you are all done and you have this loveliness sitting in front of you. Ahhh, my organizational soul is rejoicing.

Another benefit of taking the time to organize your thread? These little white cards can be stored on a ring while you are working on a project. No more forgetting which color of thread you are using for a piece. Genius. 

Anderson, you can have your drill back. The battery is dead anyway :)

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