This past week while working up stitch samples and foraging through all kinds of threads to find just the right ones to embroider the samples, I fell in love again with my thread cabinets.

I mentioned my embroidery thread cabinets back in April, and you can see them in that article. In the photo above, you can see what happens when you run out of drawer space. In the bottom drawer is the whole line (yes, the whole line) of DMC coton a broder #25, and in the top drawer, my whole collection of floche.

Some day, I’ll have another cabinet so I can spread things out a bit and see the colors without having to literally forage through the drawers. But even foraging through a shallow drawer is much easier than digging through a bag or a box.

I still love my thread cabinets, and I’m happy I made the investment in them. While cleaning up the other day, sliding these two drawers into their respective slots made me realize just how much I love these cabinets. And it reminded me that the right tools make any job more efficient. Clean up was a snap.

When you’re hesitating about the purchase of a tool for embroidery, weigh and balance what that tool will mean for you in the long run. If you put a lot of time into your needlework and derive much pleasure from it, it is usually worth the extra investment in just the right tool to help make your work more efficient, less frustrating, more enjoyable. I’m not advocating going into major debt to purchase every needlework and organization tool that strikes your fancy – not at all! But budgeting tools into your hobby fund (if you can) does make sense.

And now, I’m off to revisit those stitch samples and forage through more thread. I’ve got a finishing step tutorial coming up for you next week, along with a few website updates, some stitch play, and hopefully some other tidbits I’m working on!

Enjoy your weekend!