My new thread box has arrived

When I was putting together an order for Pipers Silks recently, I was also wondering where I was going to store them as, frankly, my workboxes are already packed and I had to move the metallics into the top drawer of another fixture in order to fit things in.  Looking around on Amazon UK, I found this little box, which seems to be used mostly for jewellery making supplies.  Each of the 18 sections measures 7.5 x 3.5 x 5 cm, which fits Pipers Silk cops beautifully, as you can see!

Although my order of threads will take a while to arrive, (Pipers is, basically, run by one lady - Susan Peck - and she does more or less everything herself and so, sometimes, things take a while to get to), I organised the shades I already had into the box to see how it worked out.

So far I've got (from top left to bottom right, across both tiers) blue-ish greens, dark greens, lighter greens, reds, oranges, yellows, blues, purples, pinks, black - white, dull browns and yellow browns.  Whether or not I'll be able to maintain these divisions when the 58 new shades come, I can't tell as yet, but, as the lions share seem to be in the red and pink category, I think I will have to play around with sections somewhat.

The two in the tier you see top right are incredibly fine 2/20 twisted silks and I plan to use that tier for more of those shades and some of the 4/20 ones, one of which (black) I have on order at the moment.  I'll post something showing the gauges against each other and a strand of regular stranded cotton when I have them all to hand.  For now, suffice to say that one strand of Piper Floss Silk (most of the above) seems to be about half the thickness of one strand of Anchor/DMC and that 2/20 seems to be about a third of the thickness of that!  For future dolls house work, it seems that one strand of 2/20 fine twist will be about the 1/12th scale equivalent of two strands of regular floss!  Tiny!

From the dimensions given on the Amazon page, I was able to work out that I could get 9 cops in each box section and that the whole box would hold a total of 162 cops, 54 per tier.  It's possible that another one could be squeezed into the six central sections, but I'm not sure that's too wise an idea.  The top two tiers I plan to keep the regular silk floss in and, when the newbies come, I'll have room for only another half a dozen.=)

It won't surprise anyone to read that I'm already considering buying a second box!  The tiers are made in such a way as you can add on as many as you like (vertically, of course), under one lid.  So, if I began to 'spill over' into a fourth tier, it's not out of the question to get one.  I also realised that threads weren't the only things that I could use this sort of box for and that my watercolour tubes could find a new home too:

All the smaller ones and all but five of the larger ones fit into this one layer, so there is a potential use for a second box with just one or two tiers as need be.

So, I'm now waiting eagerly for Postie to bring me a lovely packet from Pipers!  I've to allow 10-21 days, so, as I was only able to put in the order for this last Thursday, I can begin to look out for them from a week on Monday.  This box will soon be a good deal fuller....

BTW, Pipers Silk cops are somewhat shorter and a little narrower than those use to wind Japanese silks onto, so this sort of box may not be too useful for other brands.  If in doubt, measure first.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013