Category: Floss Organization

Thanks for purchasing our DMC Floss Organizer Cards! This guide walks you through how to print, laminate, and assemble your set for a sturdy, professional finish.

Just looking, not bought yet? This page is the assembly guide for cards you already own.

New to the idea? See what the floss cards are all about →.

Already know you want them? Get them in our shop →.

Our Floss Organizer Cards offer a fantastic way to keep your threads beautifully organized and make sure you have minimal ORTs!

This guide will walk you through the process of creating these cards, whether you’re printing directly onto cardstock or using sticker paper, plus tips on laminating for durability.

What You Need

• Our DMC Cross Stitch Floss Organizer Cards
• Printer – either for thick paper or one that can print on 220gsm (about 60 lb cover weight) cardstock – most home printers can handle this weight easily
• Cardstock – 220gsm (60 pound) or whatever your printer can use. Thicker card is often expensive so follow our directions for a ‘sandwich’ to make your cards sturdy.
• Sticker paper (optional but recommended if you’re printing on light weight card so you end up with a thicker card in the end)
• Laminating sheets (optional but recommended)
• Scissors/craft knife/paper trimmer
• 10mm (approximately 3/8 inch) hole punch

Step 1: Choose Your Printing Method

Decide whether you want to print directly onto cardstock or print onto sticker paper. The choice might depend on your printer’s capabilities and the final look you prefer:

• Directly on Cardstock: Provides a sturdy base for your cards.
• Sticker Paper: Offers a smoother finish; print on sticker paper and fix it to cardstock for added sturdiness.
  
  Note that if you use glossy sticker paper and an ink printer, you’ll need to leave more drying time. We recommend non-glossy but if you already have glossy, just leave it to dry longer before the next step. This way you reduce the risk of any smudging and potential discolouring of your floss.

Step 2: Print Your Floss Organizer Cards                         

Load your printer with your chosen paper or card and print the pages.

Make sure the print settings are adjusted to the highest quality for clear, vibrant images of the floss colors.

Step 2a: Make A Card ‘Sandwich’ (Optional)

If you’ve printed on sticker paper, stick the paper to a sheet of card. Remember to leave it to dry so that you reduce the risk of ink smudging onto your floss. If you choose to laminate, this risk is eliminated (we’ve never had ink transfer to floss, because we laminate).

If you use a colour laser printer, the toner can also transfer to your floss over time. We always laminate.

Looking for more about floss organization?

Step 3: Laminating for Longevity (Optional but Recommended)

Before cutting out your cards, consider laminating them. This step is especially useful because it:

• shields your cards from dust and fraying edges
• makes the cards sturdier and less likely to stick together or tear
• reduces the risk of any ink transferring onto your floss
• increases the lifespan of your cards significantly. My first set of homemade floss cards cards lasted 30 years without lamination but they were very ragged by the time I replaced them!

We suggest laminating before cutting – the laminate-only edge can get raggy, much more so than a cut laminated edge, which is firmer.

Step 4: Cut and Trim Your Floss Organizer Cards

After printing (and optionally laminating), use scissors or another cutting tool to cut out your cards according to the guidelines provided on the prints.

Step 5: Punch Holes

Using a 10mm (3/8″) hole punch, punch holes where marked on the card:

• first, next to the color number, name, and color swatch.
• second, along the opposite edge – 3 holes so you can thread rings or ribbon through to bind all the cards together.

Step 6: Organize Floss Cards and Bind Them

Arrange your cards from page 1 to 12 (the number-order and colour-order sets both have 12 pages), and bind them together using a ribbon, elastic, key rings, shower curtain rings, a ring binder – the choice is yours!

Having the cards bound together this way means you can flip through your floss collection easily, like turning the pages of a gorgeous book. It also keeps your threads neatly organized.

With these easy-to-follow steps, you’ll have a professional-looking set of floss organizer cards that make it easier to manage your floss, find any colour when you need it, and get lost in cross stitch faster!

Show off your finished organizer!

Tag us on Instagram @lostincrossstitch so we can see your setup — we love seeing how you make it your own.

If you’re looking for a handy way to keep track of your floss stash, our pocket-size DMC Floss Inventory Mini Book could be just what you need.

If you’re overwhelmed by your floss collection, these printable floss organizer cards make it easier to find colours fast and spend more time stitching.

• Pull one strand at a time (without the skein turning into a mess)
• No bobbin kinks, keeps floss smoother
• Easy to keep sorted by DMC number
• Stores neatly as a compact “thread book” on rings or in a binder
• Great for full collections and project sets (WIPs)

Get the flossbook style DMC Floss Organizer Cards, it’s kept my threads in line for over 30 years!

New here and just want to know what a floss organizer card actually is? It’s a card printed with the DMC colour, number and a swatch. You attach your floss to the numbered slot on the card so your whole collection sits in number order (or in shade order, if you go for the colour-order set). Bound together on a ring or ribbon, the set becomes a “flossbook” you can flip through like the pages of a book.

That’s the short version. The longer version (how I worked it out from a cereal box thirty years ago and never looked back) is below.

The Beginning

It all started when I spotted commercial thread cards at Lincraft about 30 years ago! I’d go there every payday to pick up just a few more skeins of floss, so you can imagine that the cards were out of my budget!

I was working on stitching up my little girl’s name, and the threads were getting out of control!

So I decided to make my own floss cards from a cereal box. It worked a treat!

I loved being able to pull out a single strand of any colour, no more pulling floss out of the skein and cutting it, pulling two strands and tucking the other strands back into the skein somehow. I was pretty broke remember, so I didn’t want to waste a single strand!

DMC floss organizer cards vs bobbins

When visiting my mum in Brisbane (we were living in Rockhampton at the time), I saw her using bobbins. I considered them of course – but then I saw the knot of loose threads in her bobbin box and how the floss kinked. Any temptation I had to switch to bobbins quickly left me, and I’ve never considered them since.

(When I was making this new floss organizer card set, Mum decided to pass on on her bobbin boxes to me and I filled up some gaps in my set – I unbobbined and carded them! The floss cards make such kinks – see the pic below. Luckily they seemed to improve when I braided the floss.)

But of course by this time I was hooked on (dare I say Lost In) cross stitch, so my thread collection kept building. I bought a huge sheet of card from the stationers – probably about 250gsm weight – measured out cards, cut them out with a craft knife, punched holes with a standard hole punch. I got as many cards as I could from that sheet and they were long! So I sewed up a bag to keep them – that was my first floss book!

For a project, I’d simply make a small project card and transfer the colours to the card, then move them back into my floss book when the project was done.

When I had more than one WIP (who doesn’t), if I needed to I’d split the braid – the work of a minute.

You’ll see these card collections called all sorts of thingsm like floss cards, thread cards, floss organizer cards, a flossbook – but they’re all the same idea: your threads, wound and sorted, easy to see and easy to use.

if you’re looking for more on floss organisation, this post might help.

Why It’s Called a Flossbook

Once the cards are bound together, the whole thing flips open like a little book: a flossbook. Every colour on its own page, in order, a printed swatch to check against, and the working length ready to pull.

It’s the difference between hunting through a tangled box and just… turning to the page you need.

Why make printable floss organizer cards?

When DMC released 35 new colours in 2017, starting at colour #1, I thought – I’ll just make a new card.

That made me take an honest look at my old faithful set. It was frankly, tatty. I’d redone the set a few times as my stash grew (see the stickers?), and it was very well worn, despite being protected in its calico case all those years.

I thought about cutting up a new sheet of card but the idea just didn’t appeal – I wanted something more, something that would make it less likely I’d mix up colours when moving from a project card back into the main floss book, something a bit easier to manage. Those long cards were a bit unwieldy!

Ideally it would be a colour card and storage card in one! No such thing existed – believe me, I looked!

But I’d worked in communications for over 30 years so have reasonable design skills. Why not make cards that I could print? I designed them to fit on standard paper, and did a few trial runs. Kirsty was fully on board so she scanned the DMC thread card and added the colour swatches to the cards.

The cards from this post, ready to print

These are the same cards we use for our own stash: a printable set covering every DMC shade, ready to print, trim and punch at home. They come in number order, or grab the colour-order set if you’d rather sort by shade.

Get the floss organizer cards

Next: Make Them Last

My first set of cards did pretty well for 30 years. But we could do better now – technology, right? My printer doesn’t cope well with more than about 220gsm (60 pound) paper, so I thought of making a kind of paper sandwich to make the final card thicker. I printed onto sticker paper, stuck that to the card, and then we laminated it.

It was perfect! Thin enough so it’s not bulky, firm enough so it holds its own weight when fully loaded, and bright!

Then Into Trimming and Punching

Yes, it takes some time, but so does bobbinating, and then cutting thread off the bobbins every time you use them, and dealing with the orphans if you don’t use all six strands.

We sat and chatted while we laminated, trimmed and punched – several cups of tea were had!

 My DMC Thread Book

Today, my floss organizer cards are neatly organized into what I like to call a ‘thread book,’ held together with 3 plastic  shower curtain rings so it’s easy to flip the cards, just like the pages of a book.

What I mostly love about it is that there’s just so much less waste with floss organizer cards! Every time I pull that single thread off a card, I feel it’s like a gift from my past self!

Get our floss organizer card system in our shop. It’s compact, even when full, and it’s received rave reviews for its efficiency.

No more kinks in the floss like you get with bobbins, no more  floss orphans, and no more tangled messes.

Stop Buying Duplicate DMC Floss

This printable mini-book is a pocket-sized DMC inventory you can carry in your project bag. Mark what you own and what you still need, then check it at a glance in the shop, no more scrolling through notes on your phone. Trusted by hundreds of stitchers (and counting!) Instant download, print as many copies as you like.

Get the AUD$4.99 mini book

The Future

I’m pretty set with how our floss organizer cards work now, but I’m always thinking of little extras.

Next up? A custom bag to store them stylishly, and maybe even a pattern for it (if others are interested).

Creating your own DMC Floss Organizer Cards isn’t just about neat threads, it’s about making it faster to get stitching so that you have more time for stitching!

I’d love to hear about your organizational hacks or see the creative ways you’ve kept your threads in order.