Are you a HOARDER or a WASTER?
 

There was a kid that used to come to our house and ask that question and I always got a kick out of his question. (His Daddy was seriously a hoarder...) It used to be desirable to be frugal though. Is there a difference between frugal and hoarding? People used to save everything. What I want to focus on for now is bobbin thread. YUP. Bobbin thread :cool: Thread has always been some what expensive I guess. My mom only had about 4 bobbins for her Singer FW in her entire life - were they that expensive or hard to find? She would wind the bobbin and then if there wasn't much left she would either wind more thread over it or she would wind the bobbin thread back onto the original spool of thread. It must have been a very common practice - I've seen it with a lot of the older sewing machines - bobbins with MANY colors on each one. The problem becomes how do you use the first or second color? Penny wise and pound foolish? Waste not want not? Maybe that is why they invented clear bobbins. Do you do save bobbin thread? How? Do you just buy more bobbins?

I have been sifting through my hoard of stuff and ran across some long bobbins. In the case was thread wound around a match stick - since it was in the bobbin case, I presume it was off of a bobbin. What ever works I guess. Have you got any good bobbin stories?
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I just unwound a couple of bobbins that had at least 4 colors of thread on them and I threw away the thread. Did I do wrong?????

What is the difference between throwing it away and saving it for 50 years or so?

I guess I am a waster. I pull the old thread off of any bobbins I acquire and load new thread onto them. I have a lot of bobbins I have picked up from the many machines I have purchased.

I have also wound multiple colors on a single bobbin. Used the thread for hand sewing if the color did not matter. I have removed the thread from bobbins before and thrown it away too. I have used the thread from the bobbin to baste quilts. Uses up quite a bit then. I have started to use Elmer's Washable Glue to baste with though so I might not bother to re-use bobbins with a different color.

I use up my odd colored thread bobbins on scrap quilts. You won't see the odd colors and your not wasting thread. I have a good many bobbins and sometimes they all get full. i sew scrap for a day and have lots of empty bobbins again. But I do a lot of garment sewing to get all those odd colors.

If the thread looks new and clean and the bobbin is over 1/2 full I'll hang on to it and try to use it in a quilt or a whacky bag. However if the bobbins are old looking I peal off the thread and trash it. Many times I've put what I thought was a full bobbin in and right quick run out of bobbin. Did it break, no it was a layer over another color, sometimes many colors. Recently I handed my wife a bobbin with light brown thread in it. She instantly started having tension trouble and thread breakage. The thread and bobbin looked good ... from the outside. Under the thread was rust. It had glued the thread together and that caused a lot of trouble.
Now I just peal them off and toss the thread in the trash. It's not worth the trouble.

If I fill a bobbin and don't use all of it, I'll put the bobbin in a pill bottle with the spool of thread it came off. Then I can use it when I need that thread again.

Joe

When I get older machines that have bobbin thread on them, I take it off and throw it away. I've found that bobbins with thread will rust under all that thread. The bobbins that don't have thread haven't been rusty. I think that the thread absorbs moisture and you all know what water and metal do when hanging around together. And I get very frustrated when I'm sewing something and run out of bobbin all of a sudden..... and those bobbins with 5 different colors wound on them do that a lot. Also, I don't think the thread winds as evenly when there are so many pieces of thread on the same bobbin. At least when I'm taking off old bobbin thread, the deeper I go, the tighter the thread is wound.

I also use threaded bobbins (the ones I've threaded for a project) when I'm piecing quilts or practicing FMQ, etc. When I'm sewing garments I'm a color matching fanatic..... but not on quilts where they will be hidden forever.

So, I'm not a hoarder about bobbin thread. But, I think I am a hoarder about saving spools of thread. I never have to go buy thread when I'm appliqueing.... I have an infinite number of colors.... lots of it kinda old but when I pull off the outer layer of thread.... it's usually really good. In all the years I've done applique, I've only found 1 or 2 spools of thread that would break easily. Thread is really strong as long as it's stored in a cool, dry area.

That's a really good idea, Joe. Mind if I steal it?

ditto............