Embroidery Floss Swatch Book

I have been making myself embroidery floss swatch books.

These will be very helpful for matching floss to color numbers.  

I have a fairly large inventory of  DMC cotton embroidery floss that I store in color order. 

Typically when I have new floss

I wind it onto floss bobbins.  I slip the number tag under the wound floss.

Every so often, I lose a tag and then have no way of knowing the floss color number.  Being able to match my floss to a numbered swatch will solve that problem! 

For my swatch books, I am using two archival scrapbooks.  

For the number system, I was going to use a DMC printed list of their floss numbers but they are adding new ones all the time so to keep my books current,  I thought it best to use consecutive numbers from 1 to 5000.  I printed strips of numbers:

 

I glued the strips onto the scrapbook pages and added the floss next to the numbers.

This system is working so well!

Organizing - Floss and Color

I am in the process of organizing all my embroidery floss.  I really like to see how beautiful it looks neatly stored in these plastic floss boxes.  I have a small bunch of skeins still left to wind up on their bobbins.

I was looking at the order of colors on my color wheel and I decided to arrange my floss in that order.   Such a nice collection!  It looks like I have a lot of floss and a good color selection doesn't it?  Well...

..during my organizing, I came across this list that I picked up from the fabric store quite a long time ago. 

It lists all the floss color numbers that DMC offers.  There is even a check list to mark off the colors you have.  Imagine my surprise when I checked off all of my floss and realized that I have 89 different colors - wow! But that is out of a possible 454!!!  I have only tried about 20% of their colors.

I find I tend to buy the same colors over and over.  I need to branch out - I would love to collect the whole list of colors.  I wonder about any of you?  Do you keep track of your floss colors and does anyone have a whole color collection?

Cold weather and some new floss

Happy 2013 -  I hope your year is off to a wonderful start!  Mine is starting out with embroidery :)
I just bought some new embroidery floss.  I picked up two each of a few of my favorite colors:

I also found these two colors, which are new to me. They are dmc #3032 {the sage green one} and dmc #3824 {the coral one}.  I had never seen these two colors.  I have a sage green already that I love using, it is dmc #611 but this #3032 is much lighter and has a silvery look to it.  These are both really pretty and I am looking forward to using them.

Speaking of a silvery look, it is a bit chilly here today - I had to capture the beautiful sight of the frost on these little maple leaves:

Brrr...! 

working on...

I am just getting started on this project featuring a crab, some coral and seagrasses:I am using chain stitch, back stitch and satin stitch for the crab. I am also using chain stitch for the waves and the sand line. You can just see the sand line next to the crab's leg. For the sand line, I used a color variations pearl cotton floss. It is dmc floss #4145. I just finished stitching up this little seashell:

I used more of the color variations floss: This is dmc #4180.

New hoops, floss and...

Last week I bought some new embroidery hoops. This brings my "collection" up to 10. I mostly have wooden hoops, the largest of which is 12-1/2" diameter and the smallest, 3-1/4". I even have an oval wooden hoop. I love the wooden hoops but now I am really loving using these new plastic hoops. These are the 7", 8" and 10":
Here is what the 10" looks like as two hoops. You might notice that one of these two hoops looks a little different. The hoop with the screw is just like a regular embroidery hoop. But the rim of the hoop that you place the fabric on has an edge that extends out a little larger than the hoop.
This acts like a little platform for your fabric to rest on.
The hoop with the screw then opens up wide enough to go over the bottom hoop and fabric. When you tighten the screw, top hoop sits just up under the extended edge of the bottom hoop. This set-up makes the snuggest, smoothest surface for stitching.
I also bought some new floss. These are such pretty colors - do they remind you of anything? Maybe colors you would use to stitch a gingerbread cottage or gingerbread man? I have a new pattern in the works!

perle cotton

I bought new floss at Joanns today. I wanted something violet and maybe to try a variegated floss - I found this "cotton perle" floss. It is variegated and they definitely had violet - both dark violet:
and light violety-blue:
and pink!

I obviously bought all three! I also bought these regular dmc flosses in a range of pinks and a variegated pink and white:

I have never used perle cotton and wasn't sure exactly how to use it - it comes in twisted strands. I was wondering - are you supposed to use more than one strand? I checked on the dmc website . They have a lot of helpful infomation. Apparently, you take the papers off the ends like this: Once it is free, the skein is in a big oval - one end has a tie around the end like this: Leave the tie intact. Snip through the other end like this:
and use a single strand of twisted floss - like this:
This strand will be long - about 38-39" The website suggests that beginners cut this strand in half for a more manageable length. Here is what it looks like in comparison with the six strand dmc embroidery floss:
You can see the twisted perle cotton strand is much different - the website suggests using a #22 chenille needle with this, however I have been using my #24 and it is working great! I really love this cotton perle - it will be a nice cotton-y not so silky alternative to the six strand floss. I have already completed a little project with the pink variegated cotton perle and I will be posting a picture of that in a bit!