Wooden Spools

After admiring the clever and decorative use of wooden spools at Threads of the Past living history center in San Diego Old Town State Historic Park, I decided to gather up my empty (and almost empty) wooden spools with the idea of doing something creative.  I have been collecting them for some time, putting them aside for a future use.  Thread has not come on wooden spools for quite a while; they were styrofoam briefly and now are plastic of various shapes and sizes.

After locating my spools, I decided to look in my mother's thread box to see what she might have.  After she passed away in 2012, I organized her sewing supplies a little but have not really incorporated them into my own supplies.  Somehow, hers need to stay separate for a while longer.

She kept her thread in an old fruit cake tin.  I loved looking through her sewing things as a child.  I opened the tin, and indeed she had many wooden spools of thread.  Some of them only had a small amount of thread, and I wound it off.  Most of this was polyester and I did not regret throwing it away.  Several of her spools still had plenty of cotton thread, and I left these alone.

A few of the spools had thread on them that was obviously re-wound by hand.  In fact, a couple had one color wound on one end of the spool, and one color on the other end.  There was also a folded piece of cardboard that was wound with thread.  Thrifty.

I came across her cloth tape measure, which I used to chew on as a child.  I chewed on it so much that the marked measurements are barely visible in some places.  I have a vague memory of stuffing this entire object into my mouth, the cloth crisp and cottony to the taste.

I also found a token at the bottom of the thread box.  After a little online research, I found that it dates to the 1940s.  Someone punched a hole in it and probably wore it; the Lord's Prayer is on the other side.

I don't know the story behind this item.  My mother lived in New Jersey during the 1940s, before my parents were married.  Of all the times I have rooted around in this thread box over my lifetime, I never noticed this object.   I think this shows a jalopy driving off a pier, with the surf shown below it.

Here is the collection of wooden spools that I accumulated.  Notice that one is green.  One, the most spool-looking one of all, is actually for dental floss.  I guess you cut a length of it with scissors.  The small, flat ones held silk buttonhole thread.

The ones that still have a lot of thread on them went on display in the living room with some industrial thread bobbins.  I could comment on how the price of thread has increased over time; some of the large spools are marked 39 cents (my computer keyboard doesn't even have a "cents" symbol).

I don't know what I will do with these, but I had fun looking for them and revisiting my mother's sewing box.