Favourite Things Friday: Embroidery Floss

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that – one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. –Oliver Wendell Holmes

There are very few things I buy just for the sake of having them. I'm careful about every penny I spend and if I can't find a use for it, I usually can't justify buying it. I do not have a huge fabric stash, because it seems a waste, no matter how pretty the fabric, for it to just sit in boxes not being used. I really try to only buy what I can think of a use for {and I fully intend to use everything I buy, although my quilting projects are really getting out of hand lately }. There are very few exceptions to this; Fairy Frost is one {and I even try to keep that in check} and DMC Embroidery Floss is another.

I kept my nice little box full of embroidery floss from the Precious Moments blocks and a few other cross-stitch things I did in my teens. I've held on to that box for a long time; probably 20 years now. When I got back into sewing, and quilting especially a few years back, I decided one day that I wanted to have every single color of DMC floss available so that I would always have the color I needed on-hand for doing appliqué or embroidery. I started watching for floss to come on sale for buy-three-get-one-free at JoAnn's {usually around Memorial and Labor Day and one other time during the year}. They almost always have a 10%-off-your-total-purchase coupon when the floss is on sale {double bonus}, which takes about 30% off the price and makes the floss four-for-a-dollar .

I think it has been about 2½ or maybe 3 years since I started collecting. By my calculations, I have 403 of the 460 solid colors of floss. 318 of them are neatly wound onto plastic bobbins labeled with their appropriate number. 266 of those are filed away in numerical order in big boxes {pictured above}. And the other 52 colors wound onto bobbins are being used in embroidery and appliqué projects. I put them on hinged binder rings while I'm using them to keep them together by project and keep them from getting lost. Look how pretty! Doesn't it make you want to do some stitch work?!

Look at these beauties; 85 colors waiting to be put on their bobbins.

I figure by the time I'm finished, I'll fill up one more large box {like the two pictured above} and this small one {again}. It was my original floss box. Right now I'm keeping empty-but-numbered bobbins in it until I can wind the floss on them. You see, the neat, tidy numbered stickers I bought to go on the bobbins lost their stick and started falling off the sheet {and the bobbins I'd already wound }. Still, it was neater than I could do with a Sharpie in such a tiny space, so I've been making due with glue {I figured the stick would just dry up on a new batch of stickers too, so no sense wasting, right?}. So far, I've only lost two stickers #704, which fell off a bobbin that was already wound {I'm hoping it turns up in the box somewhere} and #3352, which fell off the sticker sheet and was lost forever {and the only reason I discovered it was missing is because I need it for a project but couldn't find the sticker or a bobbin wound with that color anywhere}. I hate to buy a whole new sticker sheet for just those two numbers. We'll have to see which wins out – my need to not be wasteful or my need to have all 460 bobbins of floss numbered the same way .

Now that you're all inspired to do something pretty with embroidery floss, go check out my giveaway {which ends tonight} for an adorable embroidered witch hat.
• Zelda's Fancy Hat Giveaway {closed; congratulations to the winner, JaiCi. Pattern available here.}
[Editor's Note: This pattern is SO CUTE that I decided that I needed one for myself. This may or may not have involved a bit of pattern piracy. That largest ring of floss pictured above, the one with all the pretty graduating colors, is for Zelda' Hat.]

Today's post brought to you by: