Yesterday's post and Cathy's link to little thread winders make me think about all the different ways to store and organise different threads.
There's flat thread winders; there's round or differently-shaped bobbins, there are bobbins with or without "stoppers" at the ends. Some modern embroiderers store their threads by hanging them from a ring or into a hole in a card with lark's head knot, pulling out one piece at a time.
Myself, I have a wild mixture of things - brown paper rolls as spools, a few spindles with the thread still on them, some lathe-turned bobbins, a couple of thread winders from wood or cardboard, and even some totally non-historical plastic bobbins (those the thread came on when I bought it). I store most of this odd assortment in a cloth-covered box to keep the individual thread keepers from jumbling about too much; since the box does get tilted from time to time, though, of course they get disordered after a while. (My rummaging around in the quite-full box probably does not help with keeping it orderly either.) Neither this box nor the assortment of threads and thread holders in it are really very historical, so I tend to keep the box closed and out of sight - I only take out the bobbin or so that I need and either display it (if it is on a historically acceptable bobbin/winder) or hide it somewhere so I can get at it easily.
It would be nice to have all threads on historically accurate holders - but I can't see this coming up soon; there are too many other, more important and urgent projects for me than re-winding many, many metres of thread onto different holders.
Those of you doing Living History - how do you handle your threads?
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
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5 comments:
A part of my threads are on bobbins like the london find, in some variations.... Tony winds the thread on the bobbins when he is shaping them, so it´s not too much work for me. The rest of my threads I spooled on simple wooden sticks. It would be interesting to have some more different shapes, but I can´t even find bobbins on any painting?!
There are some bobbins made of boxwood (http://anno1347.beepworld.de/files/ausruestung-garn4.jpg), found in Freiberg, they are dated on 15.-17. century, and I think they look quite modern (I have some of this shape from 19.century)!? Really curios if there should be no more finds!?
I also have my tread on bobbins based on the London find. My boufriend Mikkel have his linnen for sewing leather on the lower leg bone from a small sheep. That works very well.
Off and on I've been able to convince people to make me thread winders -- some in wood, cut with a bandsaw, and for awhile I was able to get some about 1" in diameter in bone (someone was actually selling buttons that worked perfectly well as winders). This was a number of years ago, before I'd ever seen any suitable bobbins/spools, and whatever I used had to be something I could have out in the open. There's a picture here (next to last photo): http://wkneedle.bayrose.org/Articles/period_workbox.html
I think there's examples from Novgorod where thread was left on a spindle, but the whorl was removed. That's the main way I store the finer threads I use. But I've also followed the suggestion in the book "Woven into the Earth" and found using a nøstepinde is really effective.
I've always wanted a niddy-noddy like the one from the Oseberg burial, although that would probably be for much thicker threads.
I put some of the thread I'm using for Viking era projects on the bobbins I bought on EBay (the ones shaped somewhat like the picture in the first link in my comment), but most of the thread I have lives on the modern spools they came on, so far.
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