I’m progressing slowly with my sewing room declutter, this is the annual challenge organised by Karen of Get It Done Quilts. I like the way she breaks it down into manageable chunks – much more doable than just looking at the whole room. It’s a 21 day challenge, supposedly starting 1st January, some days take longer, some I can do several in a day…

Day 8 was scissors and all things cutting, like rotary cutters, thread snips etc. I’ve written before about my extensive scissor collection, I had a bit of a cull last year and then took them to be sharpened at a new cutlery shop that’s opened in Ilkley.

So my scissor collection stays the same, however I have sorted my unpickers, you know the little things with the red blob on for unpicking seams. I knew I had a few, but I didn’t realise I had twelve!! I decided to have a sort out, I had an embroidery I wanted to unpick a coil of thread off, so I used that to check the sharpness of my unpickers, two jobs done in one! I’ve whittled it down to six, one of them is a beautiful hand turned wooden one with an awl at one end and a seam ripper at the other, that one was definitely staying.

I’ve also had a bit of a rethink with my rotary cutters, I have three, one for fabric, one for paper and fabric (such as paper piecing) and a small one which needs a blade in it. Recently I’ve had problems with the paper one, the screw which holds the blade wouldn’t stay tight, when I tried tightening it it was difficult to get the tension right so the blade would rotate but not wobble….anyway I decided it was time to replace it. It was pretty old anyway as it’s one I inherited from my mum. So I’ve still got three, but two which work well and one just waiting for a new blade.

Day 9 was threads, a huge area, as I’ve thread for sewing, overlocking and embroidery. My sewing and overlocking threads are pretty sorted, they’re all on my pegboard. I had a bit of a sort out with bobbin threads, you know those with a quarter spool of thread on that you never get round to using, well they’re now empty. Any Gutermann spools that are nearly empty go in the draw next to my sewing machine for tacking etc. Reassuringly last year the spool rack was full, now I have more than a dozen empty dowels, so my stash is going down!

DMC embroidery threads are all on Pip and Chip bobbins, so my basic set is sorted numerically in custom made drawers (from Creations by Rod on Etsy) I do have rather a lot of spare skeins though which I think mainly came from my mums. Last year I listed them all in a book so I knew which colours I had spares of. This was a good idea except I still had a jumbled box of threads, so even if I did look, I then had the job of finding them – I’ve over 100 spare ones!

Recently I discovered the app Thread Box, I use my Fabric Stash app a lot so I thought I’d try a thread one. I’d already listed all basic stash of DMC threads on it, but not my spares. Today I went spare threads and listed those too, so I know which ones I have multiples of. I even bagged them all up so each number group such as 301 to 399 has it’s own bag! All I need to do now is make sure I update the app when I get a spare out or buy some more. There’s a shopping list section too which I find useful, so I’ve listed the threads I know I’m getting very low on and when I happen to be in a thread shop, I have my shopping list ready.

None DMC threads are on bobbins but stored colourwise, I used to have them in a box but I could never see what I had, whilst thin bobbins probably aren’t ideal, it works for me, it means I do use the threads.

All that was left to sort was machine embroidery threads, but that will have to wait for another post!