Cardboard spools for sewing organization

I used to store my lace in a big glass jar but after I started making lingerie the amount of different lace and other lingerie materials has multiplied. It has become hard to find the materials I need without spreading the whole mess of materials on the floor and that is well… just messy. I decided to arrange everything so that I could easily see the lace and the elastics I need and find the right things for my future projects. So, I made cardboard spools to wrap everything neatly. Then I got into laser cutting and decoupage… Well, all in all, there was a way too much time and energy spend on this but I had fun doing it and that’s what’s important!

Lace spools

I have wide lace for bras and panties and narrow lace for edging. Thus, I needed three different sizes of spools. I first cut spool shapes out of cardstock.

Then I glued them onto pretty pieces of patterned scrapbooking cardstock.

After wrapping all the lace I had around these cardboard spools I was surprised on the amount I had – although some spools only hold a metre or so.

I arranged a cardboard box to store all the narrow lace:

The wider lace needed bigger spools. These are 21 cm in height and about 15 in width (the size of an A5 paper). All the paler colours are here:

And here are the darker ones:

Aren’t they pretty! I am finding it hard to decide which I am going to use next. I might go for either one of the blues or then choose the slightly narrower champagne coloured lace.

Lingerie elastic spools

In addition of lace I had all these elastics and other materials for bra making:

I couldn’t use the same method with the elastics that are thicker. They needed something sturdier. I ended up buying some thicker cardboard for this. I wasn’t able to cut it properly with scissors so I went and used the laser cutter of the local library. (Yes, I know this is all too much effort for merely organizing your elastics but well… I got the idea and ran with it!)

Here are the settings that I used to remind me in the future and for anyone else planning to use the same machine:

After this, I had 36 slightly singed cardboard spools. I wiped most of the soot of and then decided to make them a little prettier. I bought decoupage gloss and paper napkins.

Decoupage with paper napkins

What I did was to separate the outermost printed layer of the paper napkins which I then cut into the shape. Then I laid it onto the cardboard spool and started spreading decoupage gloss with a paintbrush moving from the centre towards the edges. After one side was dry I did the other one.

I trimmed any extra napkin from the sides, did a little bit of sanding to smooth the edges out and finished with another coat of decoupage gloss. This is what I finally ended up with:

Then it was just a matter of wrapping all the elastics around the spools:

I thought that the little slit would be useful to hold the ends of the elastics. Finally, I think it is a bit too wide to grab the end properly so I mostly used pins or just hid the end under the wraps. Here are all of them:

Of, course the cardboard box looks ugly, so I decided to do something for it:

Much better! Now I can easily see all the colours I have and just pick the right one for my project!

I hope you enjoyed this post. How do you arrange all your ribbons, elastics and lace? Or are you one of those people who only buy materials for a specific project in mind?

Thank you for reading and happy sewing (and crafting)!

Katja