Top 4 Ways to Protect Your Perle Cotton

Have you ever been stitching and your ball of perle cotton gone rolling off into a dirty spot or puddle? What’s a quilter to do? These four ideas should help you protect that pretty perle!

Pottery Thread Bowl – Beauty & Function

These are beautiful smooth little bowls with an opening for your thread and they keep your perle cotton from rolling off of your work surface to become a chew toy for your furry friends. This is a great help at home or if you are going to a retreat and will be stitching near a table where you can safely place the bowl.

Plastic Travel Coffee or Wine Mug

If you are using multiple balls of perle cotton they can be well contained in an inexpensive travel coffee or wine mug. You simply put the balls of perle cotton inside the cup, thread the loose ends up through the lid opening and then close the spout cover over the threads to keep them from falling back down into the cup. When you need more thread, you just open the spout cover, clip off the thread you need and close the spout cover again. This saves your thread from getting wet or dirty when travelling and if you are in the passenger seat of your vehicle the cup holder can take on a whole new purpose!

Bubble Gum Machine Container – it Works!

Those little plastic containers that come out of bubble gum machines finally have a good use! Take a small drill and put a hole in the end and you can let you thread come out of that one spot – just be careful to make the hole really smooth so that you aren’t damaging your thread pulling it through the hole.

Ziploc Bag

This may be the least elegant and least expensive option, just beware that this may not be the best option if you have little people or furry friends – then you need to be careful with soft plastic for safety reasons. Just take a Ziploc-style bag, run a line of stitching or two down the length of the bag and punch a hole in each section to allow your thread to peek out. This will keep your thread clean and dry but will need replacing more often than the other options, and depending on the project, you may need to make more than one to hold all of your perle cotton balls.