I'm trying to buy vintage or recycled materials whenever possible, and I needed more embroidery thread for practice. I want to start working more with six-stranded floss as well, as I need a lot more practice with that. I started looking around, and set myself a tight budget to keep from overspending. I've been watching estate sale and large thread lot listings on a couple of sites for a couple of months, but I was either outbid or had some qualms about the threads due to condition, description, discolorations, poor listing pics, etc.
Finally I found a large lot that looked good and fit my budget. The listing had great photos so I could look at everything up close. I rolled the dice and bought it.
Sorting out the threads was fun (yes, I'm weird.) I ended up with around 250 skeins of 6-stranded vintage and near-new thread. The majority are DMC floss, which I prefer over other brands, but there were some Anchor, JP Coats, Prism and AI as well. None of them were dirty, stained or odorous, and only a handful were unlabeled. When you purchase vintage thread online the biggest headache is the condition in which they arrive (and for me the smell.) I'd call 90% of this lot like new, and the rest in good, usable condition.
Included with all the floss were 24 pristine skeins of DMC #3 perle thread. This is the thread I use most often, and to buy them new would cost about $2.00 a skein.
Whoever owned this thread before me carded a lot of the DMC skeins on paper bobbins, and numbered them. These sold me on the lot; I fell in love with the colors. There were also two project thread holders, and even a spool of fine metallic thread. Someone really cared about their thread; you can just tell by the condition. I will do the same.
The final plus for me was that the seller offered free shipping, so the cost of the whole lot worked out to about twelve cents a skein. You can't beat that price for practice thread. :)
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