These are my thread drawers. I wrote about them a long time ago – thirteen years ago, as a matter of fact.

Until recently, the drawers were organized in a pretty basic system: A series of drawers would be dedicated to one brand and type of thread. So, for example, DMC stranded cotton occupied some 8 or so drawers. Each drawer (or two) was dedicated to a color family: two drawers full of green DMC stranded cotton; two drawers of reds; one drawer of purples, and so forth.

If I needed red DMC stranded cotton, I went to the “red” DMC stranded cotton thread drawer and dug around for the specific color number I was looking for – or, if I wasn’t looking by number but rather by shade or tone, I rummaged till I found the shade or tone I was looking for, or I referenced the real thread color chart, found the shade I wanted, and then rummaged for the number.

You can image that such rummagings are not conducive to efficiency.