My wife likes to sew. Recently, she asked me to build some sort of rack to hold her thread collection (spools and matching bobbins). It had to meet several requirements.
When not in use, it needed to fit in a small corner (about one foot square) beside a decorative cabinet.
It needed to be attractive, but somewhat unobtrusive, to avoid competing look-wise with the cabinet.
It needed to store matching pairs of spools and bobbins. (When she installs the thread on her sewing machine, she installs a spool and a bobbin loaded with the same thread.)
Ideally, when in use, it would present her entire collection at once.
The photos above show what we designed, and I built. It’s a rolling cart with two fold-out racks on each side. Each rack contains nine tilt-out blocks that hold four spool/bobbin pairs each, for a total of 144 pairs. Each bobbin sits in a shallow circular well, and the bobbins and spools slide over 5 mm dowels.
It’s made of calico walnut, finished with satin Arm-R-Seal. It’s about 32” tall. With the racks folded, it has a footprint roughly 9” square. With the racks opened, it’s about 36” wide.
When not in use, it’s parked in the corner next to the cabinet.
To use it, my wife rolls it out a few feet, rotates it, and unfolds the racks. It fits neatly between its parking spot and our china cabinet. (As you can see, our dining room doubles as my wife’s sewing room.)
The spools and bobbins are stored upright to save space.
The spool blocks tilt out to provide access to the thread. The blocks were supposed to tilt out 45 degrees.
Unfortunately, most of them tilt out much farther. As Maxwell Smart would say, I “missed it by that much.” (That’s for you, Ross. 😊) I plan to try to fix that later; I’m not sure I’ll succeed.
Narrow slats behind each tilt-out block serve as tilt stops. When the spools are upright, the blocks rest on the stops. Magnets embedded in the blocks and stops prevent accidental tilting.
When the blocks are tilted, the stops limit the rotation. If you look carefully, you can see that the upper block stops at about 45 degrees because the front edge of the stop contacts the back edge of a beveled notch in the block. The block below it tilts out too far because the stop doesn’t contact the notch; the block keeps rotating until its underside (in front of the notch) contacts the stop. (The potential fix involves attaching thin shims or spacers to the front edges of the problematic stops.)
The cart’s base has a skirt around it that serves two purposes. First, it conceals the casters (my wife’s request). Second, it holds nearly 8 lbs. of rebar (hidden inside that plywood cradle) that stabilizes the cart. Without it, the cart tended to lean backward when the racks were unfolded.
Thanks for looking! If you’d like more design and construction details, read the corresponding blog series or view the SketchUp model. (If you view the model, make sure to check out the scenes that highlight various components.)
This is a beautifully designed cabinet. You must know have a very happy wife! My wife is a quilter, and your blog caught my eye. I would love to show her this but I'm afraid she would need at least 3 to fill her ever growing thread collection, but who are we as woodworkers to complain about collecting anything associated to a hobby LOL!
-- Paul--- Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. — Scott Adams
I'm still baffled by the scale, looks so big until the photo with it tucked in next to the cabinet. You definitely could/need-to make a small army of those. If your wife's sewing buddies see it , you be buried in orders for years!
That is very well done. My wife does quilts and embroidery and has a zillion different threads. I think she pays $7-8 per spool. So to fill your creation would be around $1000. Sewing is not cheap kind of like woodworking.
Yeah, but if it takes $1000 to fill it, then crafters would probably be willing to pay $400-$600 for one. It’s a matter of scale. If you batched them, I bet you could really reduce time and cost. I could see it being sold at high end crafter’s fairs.
Ryan/// ~sigh~ I blew up another bowl. Moke told me "I made the inside bigger than the outside".
Thank you all for your kind comments. Half the fun of building things is writing about here and getting feedback.
LBD, the bobbins she uses are inexpensive. She recently bought 100 for about $12 (USD).
987Ron, yarn would be a different ball of wax. These racks would need to be closet sized.
tinnman65, I bet your wife goes through a ton of thread. Do you ever go fabric shopping with her? I do (with my wife), and the quilting shops usually have several long arm quilting machines. They’re huge computer controlled machines that can sew intricate patterns. They’re fascinating to watch.
Birdseye49, my wife’s average cost per spool is much lower. She typically buys 250 yard spools, and they’re run about $4 at the local JoAnn Fabric store. The store almost always has coupons she can apply, and they’re frequently have buy-three-get-three-free promotions too. Some of my wife’s spools are very old. She was showing me some she got from her mom that were originally sold for 15 cents.
Ryan, I never gave any thought to trying to sell these racks. I figured my wife’s requirements were unique to her situation. If she had a dedicated room, she probably would have wanted something wall mounted with fixed-angle spools. That would have been much easier to make. I suppose our design might appeal to people without dedicated spaces (like mobile tools and benches appeal to garage-shop woodworkers like me). If I were to consider making more, I’d really have to get my act together with respect to the tilt stops.
Splint, this thing does fold down more compactly than anything I’ve ever built. The weirdest thing for me while building was the ordering of the four racks. I numbered them 1-4 (left to right) in the closed position (and I cut them side-by-side from the same board). But, when the racks are unfolded, the inner and outer racks change position—the L-to-R ordering changes to 2-1-4-3. That definitely made me think I had drilled pivot holes in the wrong racks, etc.
This was quite the journey, but hey, it tilts, it whirls, and when not needed it folds up and puts itself away. I can't think of better attributes for a thread minder, and when it is open gives a great view of what's inside. Heck of a build, very well done Ron.
Sell those to sewing centers for 500 to 750 bux each for hardwood, sell them all day long. The hardest part of that is making them production style So materials and time come out to make it plenty profitable.
I’m not sure I want to go into the production business, but the idea does have its attractions. One potential obstacle is the SU license. It specifies “for personal use only,” or something to that effect. I don’t know if that prohibits the sale of any object modeled by the software, or if it’s intended to prohibit sales of a higher volume.
