After an enjoyable vacation to Vancouver, Canada, I returned home with Covid. Ugh! Thankfully I only felt poorly for 2 days. However, I did isolate for a few days afterwards. I certainly don’t want to “share” with anyone intentionally. During those days I chose to do something enjoyable and relaxing.

Embroidery is always enjoyable to me! I remembered seeing spools used as scissors holders on Pinterest and decided that would be a lovely project to work on. I knew that my mom had sent me a package with wooden spools several years prior to her passing. I quickly found them – just where I remembered saving them!!!

I sanded 2 of the spools and then had hubby put a couple coats of varnish on them. Note that the spool on the left was made by joining 2 different pieces of wood, so the 2 sides of it are different colors! I love this!!!

Next up was making up a simple pattern for the wrap and then coming up with a suitable embroidery design. The area is quite small, so the embroidery can be completed in a day if you’re stuck at home! LOL! The first wrap (pictured on the left) I included a flannel “batting”, which I later determined wasn’t necessary. I knew that I wanted a decorative trim along the outside edge. I chose to do a knotted buttonhole stitch and used #5 pearl cotton.

While I liked the end result, the pattern needed some refining. On the second wrap, I eliminated the flannel batting. I embroidered a different design. After all, who wants to do the same design over again when you don’t have to! I also chose to use a thinner pearl cotton and went with the #8 and this time did a Pekinese stitch along the outside edge. I am very pleased with the success of the second one, though the first one is lovely and very functional as well.

These larger wooden spools can be ordered from Amazon. My vintage spools have a slit in them where the thread began and ended, which you would have with a true vintage spool. The craft spools don’t have that, which might be preferable as a scissors holder. The hole in the spools will hold any embroidery scissors. I have at least 5 different scissors that I’ve tried and work well. The slightly larger embroidery scissors would require that the hold be drilled out to make it a little larger, which is an easy task for someone with minimal handyman skills.

I’m back to the world of the living, so I’m sure that I’ll be completing other sewing projects in the days to come!

Happy stitching!

Kathy