Sep 11, 2011

Collecting Wooden Spools


Wooden spools are pretty rad.


I was quite dissappointed at the lack of information about spools and spool collecting out there. I wanted to post this badass essay about spool history and spool collectors. I wanted there to be a spool society or a spoolers guild. But I came up empty handed. 


What I did find in my spool data search was a conversation thread about why people collect wooden spools. It wasn't very informative. The end result was "for crafting projects." Most of the spool craft projects I came accross were really tacky. This site offered a list of spool project ideas. PetaPixel had this great DIY project (which is beautifuly photographed) detailing how to make your spools into photo holders. I like to keep my spools in jars. Sometimes I pour them out and look at them. 


Wooden spools have many shapes and sizes. This site is a good resource for idintifying some of the more unique shapes. They also have them available for purchase.


This spool heart has been floating around Pinterest for months.

I'm sorry the spool info was so slim. If you have any helpful info, links to sights, or book reccomendations on collecting wooden spools please let us know! 

I will leave you with this amazing video of a train made of wooden spools.
It's the best thing I found in my spool research!






4 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for the feature! Lovely post!

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  2. I know what you mean. I just posted on one of my other blogs about wooden spools and I thought it would be nice to give a little history about them but there isn't much to report about. In Maine there was a town that used to make wooden spools. It had the nickname of "Thread City". I will keep looking to see if I can find some info, I'm not giving up that easy. You can see my photo on this blog site. http://stitchedanddyed.wordpress.com/

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  3. I will try to respond again when I find something - I'm looking in to spool knitting at the moment (more modern version of a lucet) but I need to know when they started making wooden spools to make it worthwhile. I have seen it referred to as 'ancient' but that could refer to the lucet that inspired it. Grr...

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  4. Alright - I found mention that cylindrical spools were created about the same time as sewing machines since spools prior to that could not spin. That puts them 1790 at the earliest. Still nothing solid - but it's a starting point.

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