The inside of my printer’s cabinet

A couple months ago I wrote a blog post about cleaning and repurposing a vintage printer’s cabinet as my ’embroidery cabinet’. A number of you expressed an interest in seeing the inside after it has been filled. With redecorating my craft room I never got round to it, but with my next certificate course coming up in the next few weeks when many of my wool threads will be used up, the time had arrived to document the inside of the drawers.

I had originally intended on taking a video but as my video-skills are not quite there yet, I opted for a photographic record instead. Below you will find the contents of each of the drawers to give you an idea about how I have organised them and changed the configuration of them. As I have been using my cabinet for a couple of months now I have already discovered that some configurations do need to change a little bit to allow better storage of some threads.

If I have lots of colours of the same type of thread I have stored them according to their colour number, which usually means that the threads are stored in colour families.

To prevent the inside of drawers, even after careful cleaning, staining the threads, I have covered the bottom of the drawers in acid-free tissue paper. The holes for the whitework threads I have covered completely in tissue paper as white is obviously even susceptible to staining.

Do let me know if you have would like more details about specific items you have spotted in my photographs. I will be more than happy to let you know what type and brand they are and where I have purchased them from.

Drawer 1: Wool

Drawer 2: Goldwork

Drawer 3: Whitework & Perlé

Drawer 4: Stranded silk

Drawer 5: Silk other

Drawer 6: Metallic threads

Drawer 7: Cottons

If you wondering where my DMC stranded cottons are, they are stored in Gold Concept folders in the same order as the DMC shade card.

Drawer 8: other threads

Drawer 9: Beads

Drawer 10: Buttons

Drawer 11: Ribbons

Drawer 12: Charms, labels, magnets, eyelets, mini-hoops etc

Drawer 13: other small items

Drawer 14: Organization and storage-items

Drawer 15 (left): Mill hill beads & Drawer 16 (right): other bead collections

Drawer 17 (left): Mettler Seralon sewing threads & Drawer 18 (right): other sewing threads

Drawer 19 (left): Piping and Bias tape & Drawer 20 (right): zips, cord, velcro, elastic

Drawer 21 (left): pipe-cleaners, felt balls, wire & Drawer 22 (right): tracing paper, plastic and paper canvas, waste canvas etc.

Drawer 23 (left): embroidery hoops & Drawer 24 (right): Siesta no-sew embroidery frames