I think that is what my mother would call this. I recently bought a vintage singer and she came with vintage bobbins, of which, they came with crappy thread on them.

So I needed to take the thread off so I could put good thread on it. As I unwound the bobbin, there were 13 different colors of thread on this same bobbin. Seems as soon as I finally got one off, there was another one.

Was it a common practice to put thread on an already threaded bobbin?

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I've been guilty of doing that. Only had a few bobbins and needed another color of thread for mending:)

I remember my mom doing that. She only had so many bobbins and wasn't going to waste the thread.

Yes, I remember my mom doing the same thing to save the thread I assumed.

In those days, when that machine was a youngster, people didn't go to a WalMart and buy 10 bobbins at a time, they had probably two at the most and rather than undo the color and rewind another, which was considered wasteful, they would just wind the new color over the other. Some of us grew up as products of the Great Depression and waste not, want not was the rule of the day. To this day, I have a hard time throwing anything away.

I've never seen anything like it before. 13 different colors...just so strange.

We must have been posting at the same time. This sure clarifies things. I can only imagine the cool things those threads must have stitched together.

Lol...I just found that my featherweight bobbins were the same way. I had 10 colors on one bobbin. I thought it was so funny. I had never done that before.

I remember my mom doing that not taking off the old thread.

I use to, years ago put a couple of colors on a bobbin. Didn't want to waste the thread. I now have lots of bobbins and don't have to do it that way.
Looks like a rat's nest to me.

Never heard of that!!

My dad has picked up bobbins and spools of thread at the goodwill and has given some to me and on some of the bobbins there were probably ten different threads on them. And since I didn't want to use that old stuff, I started pulling it all off and thats how I found it.

When I first started sewing, I only had so many bobbins, so yes I would put more than one thread on a bobbin.

We never wound the bobbin full, just enough to do the job. any left over stayed on. Waste not, Want not. Not a bad way to be raised.

My sewing machine wouldn't like that much. It's grumpy enough about the bobbin as things are.

I've never seen anything like it before.

Have seen it a lot....specially if I've bought a second hand machine. Don't do it myself as it would drive me nuts, I like to keep my colours separate.

I found the same thing when I got my featherweight. Not 13 different colors though, just 3 or 4.

Yep..used to do it when I was younger. If I had extra time I would wind the thread back onto the spool over the rest of the thread. I actually still do that. But fortunately I have extra bobbins now instead of just a few.

I used to do that, too. To use up that bobbin thread then, I would use those bobbins when I was patching the kid's clothes. They didn't care!!

Yes, I only had two bobbins and I just reused them adding the color of thread I needed on top. Now we have so many store around that sell sewing supplies that it is hard to imagine there weren't that many places to buy equipment for your sewing machine.

I do it all the time especially if I just need a small amount of a certain color some of my bobbins have 3 or 4 colors on them.

My old Singer only had one metal bobbin, so I guess I probably would have been guilty of that.

I remember my mom doing that so she would not waste the thread or she would take a little scrap of paper and wind the remaining bobbin thread on that and use it for hand stitching.

It is amazing what was done not to waste anything. I haven't put 2 colors of thread on 1 bobbin very often, but I do rewind it back on to the spool if it is a color I don't use very often & there is quite a bit left on the bobbin. I have a wonderful machine guy that gives you extra bobbins when you go back into the store just for the asking. I never seem to have enough bobbins & always looking for an empty one.