My favorite embroidery floss spools are made not just of recycled, recyclable cardboard, but are also pretty awesome.
One cardboard spool has Art Garfunkel’s face on it, and another has Cookie Monster’s. One shows a scene from Gone with the Wind, and one shows that cocky grin sported by Maverick in Top Gun.
I crafted my DIY cardboard embroidery floss spools from old cardboard record album covers, but maybe you’d prefer to use cereal boxes, so that you can sport Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam on your spools, or brown mailing boxes, so that you can ink in your own labels and clever sketches.
Either way, DIY cardboard embroidery floss spools are quick to make, at least as sturdy as store-bought floss spools, and they’re free!
Here’s how to make your own:
Next >> How to Make the Spools
brilliant! yer right, they are pretty…my floss is all stuffed into a jar getting tangled. i need to do this…sadly, the only cardboard we have is not nearly so pretty.
Yours are so much prettier than mine. I usually use the cards from the inside of magazines or junk mail.
And they don’t bend? I don’t know why I keep thinking that the cardboard has to be so sturdy–I just REALLY like cardboard, I think. But now I’ll start using pretty cardstock-weight papers, too!
I use sponge hair curlers. That way my floss doesn’t have dents in it.
I have a shameful confession to make. When I say this post in my reader, I thought, “Why bother? The plastic bag as been working for the last few years.” I didn’t even bother reading the post
Yesterday I decided to put all my embroidery floss in a newly acquired glass jar. As I pulled out the jumbled mess, I realized that the plastic bag had not really worked out well. I used the included spools to make more. Now I have a very pretty jar of unused embroidery floss and one of “opened” floss wound onto spools.
Should have just read this earlier and realized there is a reason for those spools :0)
Properly winding embroidery floss and yarn, and properly folding fabric, is one of those things that I never *want* to do, but I’m always glad when I’ve done it. And when I haven’t done it properly, which is also often, I’m always irritated at myself. I made an order of bean bags the other day, and it was ridiculously clear by how much ironing I had to do which of my bean bag fabrics I had stored properly and which I hadn’t.
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Thanks for the quick tutorial, I linked to it on my blog today. Yours was the best tutorial I found, simple yet cute!