Ivan Matfeevich Rezansky (John Beebe)For years, I’ve carried around my embroidery materials and equipment in plastic zippered bags, which were convenient, but didn’t look vaguely medieval. While I was at Autumn’s Inspirations, I was working at a table and was suddenly inspired (hah!) to come up with a better storage system for my stuff – scissors, floss, wax, needles, etc.
First up on my list was finding a better way to store my embroidery floss. I had been using the mundane method of plastic cards on a ring, which was really kind of embarrassing to pull out at an event while I was in garb. A quick look online found a number of historic examples of thread winders from history, including:
- A Viking thread winder, made from horn or antler, item #107575 in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. This is more akin to modern mundane thread winders.
- A thread winder from 1200 England, and an attempt at recreation.
- This Finnish bobbin, dated 1200-1550, in the Aboa Ventus museum.
- This bone bobbin in the Museum of London, item PWB88[1580]<661>.
- These Tudor thread winders which were aboard the Mary Rose, an English warship which sank in 1545.
In the end I decided I liked the bobbin style as easier to store, and possibly reusable also for Viking whipcording. A number of vendors online sell reproductions, but I found them first on Etsy (of course). I ended up going with these bobbins from a vendor named SisterMaide, who sells a number of different lathed styles in batches of 5 for a pretty reasonable price.
 |
| Thread bobbins with some Soie d’Alger silk from Au Ver a Soie. |