A few years ago, I learned to sew for pleasure and for practical reasons like shortening curtains by myself, repairing a T-shirt, etc. As always, it got out of hand; I now own several sewing machines and am thinking about buying a coverlock.

Sewing is not just about a sewing machine; a lot of tools are needed, like seam rippers, scissors, chalk, fabric scissors, meters, circular cutters, cutting pads, pins, needles, pincushions ... and thread. Lots of thread. I use mostly thread from the Czech brand Amann and to be smart, I use their cheaper half-kilometre-long spools. Those who don't sew probably don’t know that two threads of the same colour are actually needed for sewing on a regular sewing machine—the classic thread spool and then the lower thread unwound from the thread spool on the bobbin spool. This bobbin spool is located very close to the needle in the sewing machine.

A spool with a winding of 500 meters has a diameter of 2.63 centimetres and a height of 5.75 centimetres. A 100-meter spool has a diameter of 1.55 centimetres and a height of 5.7 centimetres. And the bobbin tends to have dimensions around 11 x 20.5 millimetres.

Unwinding the lower bobbin spool makes the sewing machine very simple, but storing the bobbin spools in a different organiser than normal spools did not suit me very well. For instance, at night, it was hard to differentiate between the shades. I wanted to come up with a solution that would allow me to hold the thread spools together with bobbin spools.

I have several IKEA drawer units Alex around my apartment, even where I mostly sew. The top drawers are very shallow, which can be limiting. However, I started thinking about it and decided to solve the spool issue forever.

This was not the first idea that came to my mind. Yet, previous ideas turned out to be dead ends, and only this one proved to be practical. It occurred to me to use the upper shallow Alex drawer unit.

I modelled the organiser for the drawer. The point was that the organiser would have several rows; under each spool would be a space for the bobbin spool that I could pull out at any time.

A circle with a diameter of 22 millimetres is used to store the bobbin spool, with circles with a diameter of 19 millimetres on both sides. The purpose of these 19-millimetre circles is so that I can easily use my fingers to take out the bobbin spools.

I copied the object three more times horizontally and four times vertically so that a total of 20 colours fit into one organiser.

Each large spool is 33 millimetres long from the side, and the hemisphere diameter is 27 millimetres.

The final model was 23.5 centimetres, 16.5 centimetres, and 2.6 centimetres in height. I printed it out with the classic 0.3 DRAFT print quality. But even so, it consumed a lot of filament; I don't think it's a commercial idea that should be sold :)

The bobbin spool can be easily pulled out exactly as I planned; it does not jam at all.

In the end, I printed the 5x4 model twice, but I still had room in the drawer for two more rows, which were easy to reach by hand. So I made the same model, but only with two rows, to use the maximum of the upper drawer of the Alex drawer unit.

This is what it looks like when it’s full—a total of 48 500-meter spools. Under each thread spool is the bobbin spool in the same colour.

How do the spools come out? I'm only halfway through the idea now and will continue with the next post. But in the end, they are pulled out easily.

STL file

• Organiser for threads