Thread Drift

Hello again, I hope your weekend is going well and you haven't suffered much weather-wise. We had a tremendous wind-storm last night I'm surprised the tiles are still on the roof! But today is chilly, windy but SUNNY! Hoorah, I can bear it if the sun shines.

Right, I'm afraid after the quilty loveliness of the last few posts this is going to be sadly disappointing, but it does come to you from the vasty depths of my sewing room, which is a little tidier than when you last saw it. Not much, but I am making an effort. Part of that effort was Sorting Out my Threads. This delightful displacement-activity, the kind us procrastinators just love, has occupied my time for a whole afternoon. And look! I saved a whole bucketful of thread scraps! Oh come on, don't tell me you don't too - long enough to come in useful but not long enough to wind round a skein. Any way, my current thread storage was getting past it, and I needed to tidy things up as well. My stranded embroidery floss is in one of those purpose -made plastic folders and is staying there. I'm not going to show it to you because .erm .......it's a bit messy. But it is sorted. Ribbon thread, slubs, metallics and oddments are in plastic boxes. But the rest I had been keeping in zippered plastic envelopes. This had worked for years but the zips were going and the plastic looks old and faded. (I know the feeling)

DMC Perle 5 and 8

Hand-dyed mostly variegated soft medium cotton.

Hand-dyed silk

Hand-dyed variegated 4-ply cotton - mostly from 21st Century Yarns (some from when they were 20th Century!)

          A mixed bag here - I can see silk, soft cotton, and some interesting twisted threads in there.

                   More silks and soft cotton here - why they are in the same bag I don't know.

          Oh my goodness  these gorgeous jumbo silk threads - I will use them one day, I really will!

       Hand-dyed perle cotton, form a variety of sources but Oliver Twists and 21st Century probably

And these tangled hanks have been hanging around for years. You buy them at Quilt Fairs thinking you will use them but never get round to it. Because they are in such large hanks. So I unravelled......

......and EVENTUALLY arrived at this nice, usable little collection of various weights of thread and wools.

And then, having ditched the tatty plastic envelopes, I sorted the threads into their new storage place.

So there we are, all tidied away and gone are those big hanks, the threads now sorted and accessible. To any of you who might possibly think this is an excessive amount of thread to keep in one house, I will say that it has been collected over at least a fifteen year period, and it does get used! To the left of the above photo you can see another set of plastic drawers, which contains all my other sewing threads: machine sewing, machine embroidery threads, household sewing threads ..... again, collected over many  years.

So with everywhere nice and tidy I am enjoying using the space again. Nothing wildly exciting at the moment, just a few more wool pincushions on the go, and ..... well, you can see in the lower corner some interesting felt shapes worming their way into the photo. No, I'm not telling you yet. I'm just having some fun with an idea.......

........ watch this space!

Until next time.