Day 8 of the Declutter your Sewing Room Challenge was scissors and snips. Now I’m a bit of a sucker for pretty embroidery scissors so I do have quite a few…

I took all the scissors and snips off my pegboard, found a few more and I had quite a pile!

I’ve got a few pairs of traditionally made Sheffield Steel scissors from either Ernest Wrights or William Whitely’s, forged here in Yorkshire, so they went first on the keeping pile, two pairs of purple handled dressmaking scissors, applique scissors and two pairs of embroidery scissors (different sizes!). My big black handled dressmaking scissors can go to work where we need another pair of fabric cutting scissors.

My duck-billed scissors also went straight onto the keeping pile, these are useful when trimming back a seam or say trimming the stabiliser off the back of an embroidery. With these I’m a lot less likely to catch the top fabric too.

Paper scissors were fairly easy, two big pairs to keep, two little pairs I struggled to get my fingers in went in the recycle bin. I’ve also lots of scissors and artery forceps which were destined for the bin at work, they come in sterile theatre packs and they’re single use only, if a pack is opened and then patient is cancelled or plans change, the whole lot goes in the bin. The artery forceps are very useful around the house generally but in sewing I use them for turning things right way out and turning the corners neatly. I’ve kept two pairs of the scissors and three artery forceps, well technically it’s two pairs of artery forceps and one needle holder! The rest have gone downstairs to the scissor drawer.

I then looked at my embroidery scissors, including a couple of pairs downstairs I reckon I have about twenty pairs!!! I’ve got purple ones, flowery ones and a whole flock of storks in a variety of colours! I pulled out a couple of pairs I struggle to get my fingers in and some that might be very pretty but they’re very loose and hang open. So I’ve cut it down to fourteen pairs!!!

I had three pairs of snips but I only used one pair as the others weren’t sharp enough any more so they’ve gone.

My pegboard is looking slightly more organised. The next challenge is thread, this includes everything from sewing thread, bobbins, overlocker thread and embroidery threads, so that’s going to take a while.