Pearl Cotton is lovely for stitching but it can be troublesome to store.
Work with it as packaged and get a tangled mess.
Remove the tags, untwist, cut at the knot and you will have long lengths and lose important information. Try to put the tag back on and it’s a mess.
Cut at the end with two loops and miss cutting some threads. This gives you a worse tangled mess.
I usually solve this by cutting at the single loop end and leaving the tags in place. You will still have one knotted length that’s hard to pull out, but that’s a small price to pay.
That is until now. Wild Olive has a cute and clever idea to make your own storage for Pearl Cotton using popsicle sticks, described in this illustrated tutorial. If you aren’t using a ring for storage, you can even do it more easily by skipping the holes.
Do you have a method to store Pearl Cotton you like?
About Janet M Perry
Janet Perry is the Internet's leading authority on needlepoint. She designs, teaches and writes, getting raves from her fans for her innovative techniques, extensive knowledge and generous teaching style. A leading writer of stitch guides, she blogs here and lives on an island in the northeast corner of the SF Bay with her family
And with an indelible pen, you could write the color code, manufacturer, etc on the end of the stick! Cool ides!
I store my perle cotton in floss away bags labeled with color number and size. Before putting in the bag, I take off the label, untwist the skein, cut the skein on one end, twist one end of complete skein until it is small enough to pass back through the skein label, move the label to the middle, divide the thread that is hanging from the label into three and loosely plait the three lengths. You now have a neat plait that you can hold by the label and pull one thread out without a problem, keeping everything else in place and unknotted. Works great! A lot of my stitchy friends do this. Hope you think this is helpful! Sincerely,
Karen Broussard
Sounds just lovely!
Keep Stitching,
Janet