I’ve made two thread drawers for my Ikea Alex cabinet.

This was the first one and I use it to hold all of my cotton quilting threads and matching bobbins.

My husband Terry helped me make this first drawer using peg board and dowels. We glued them in. You can check out the original post here. I like to keep my bobbins with my thread but you might notice that the Aurifil thread takes up the whole dowel. I have to store the bobbins separately. Heavy sigh. But it’s not a big deal. Just happy that they are all nicely organized and I can see what I have at a glance.

I received a lot of comments and questions on that post and several readers suggested that I use golf tees. I needed a second thread drawer so Terry and I went back to the garage and made this drawer with pegboard and long golf tees. You can read how we made the second drawer here.

And I got more questions and comments here which is pretty cool since most of them were good ideas and suggestions.

Last week I received a long comment from Susan that had several questions about the thread drawer that I decided I would answer the best I could right here. Today.

I’m going to edit some of the Susan’s questions but you will get the idea. Her questions are in italics….

I’m a little late to this post, and I read both of them. I like the idea of keeping my thread clean from dust, so I don’t care for those wall racks. The 3 1/4” tees are too long for my drawer. My total inside height must be 2 3/4” tops. If I use pegboard, which I have, that will take up part of the height, unless I put the pegs thru from underneath, like you did.

Were the shorter tees too thick for the spools, too thick for the bobbins, or just not long enough to hold them both?

And this is me, regular print….

My thread drawers are 3 1/2″ tall. The long tees that I used were 3 1/4″ tall. Long enough for a regular spool of thread and a bobbin. (except Aurifil thread) And since the tee was thinner than the dowel, we didn’t have to sand them. Less work!

Once upon a time I played golf. Like two days a week. I haven’t played in five years but Terry continues. I rummaged through my old golf bag and managed to come up with ONE short tee! (I only keep my golf stuff because I really love my golf bag. It’s purple. I waited a long time to save the money for it. And now it hangs in Terry’s garage adding a little feminine touch!)

The short tees is about 2 1/8″ tall. I also found two that are 2 3/4″ tall. Both the long and the short tees are the same thickness. (At least the ones I used were. There are many different styles of golf tees now.)

Because they are shorter, the bobbin did not fit on top of the spool of thread. Is that a problem? Not really. As I mentioned previously, the Aurifil thread does not fit on the dowel or tee with the bobbin. I’ve adapted. I usually store it on a dowel right beside it.

I couldn’t find the shorter golf tees on Amazon. The trend now is longer golf tees. I did find some Maxfli 2 1/8″ tees on Golf Galaxy.

So then I moved on to dowels in the peg board. Off to Home Depot where the smallest size dowel is 3/16″. It cost 67 cents.

Back on drawer one, Terry sanded around the tops of the 1/4″ dowels–about 1/2″ down from the top—because the hole in the bobbin was too narrow for the 1/4″ dowels. But with the 3/16″ dowel, the bobbin slipped right on!

And back to Susan….

What kind of saw did your husband use to cut up the dowels? (Don’t ever try to cut up tongue depressors/Craft sticks with your electric miter saw. I tried cutting a bunch held together and they shredded and flew around the room like shrapnel. Very dangerous! I only tried that once!) Just wondering if dowels need to be cut by hand?

Terry cut the 1/4″ dowels with his circular saw but he thought any kind of saw would work. But we didn’t test that–you might want to check that out in case it also turns into shrapnel! Yikes! Maybe one at a time?

Just because I was afraid of the possibility of shrapnel, I cut the 3/16″ dowel with my wire cutters. (Is that tool abuse?) Worked just fine. Just a little bit of sanding smooths out the ragged ends. Just want to say that I love my wire cutters. They were extra in Terry’s tool box and I needed them to cut fake flowers back when I did fake flower arrangements. That was like back in the 90s but I hung onto those cutters. They actually cut wire! And dowels! Life changing!

And more from Susan….

I have a couple ideas:

1. The pegboard is available in two different hole sizes; 1/8” and 1/4”. I’m wondering how thick the dowels were that you had to sand down? If they were 1/4” dowels, (because the holes were 1/4”?) what if one used 1/8” dowels? Set the pegboard on a piece of parchment (non stick) put a squirt of hot glue in one hole at a time and put in a piece of dowel, holding for a few seconds till it sets up? The hot glue should fill up the space around the dowel, and secure it, I should think.

I did not know that pegboard came in two different hole sizes so on my Home Depot trip I checked it out. Only one size local. Couldn’t find anything on Amazon, either. So I’m stuck with the 1/4″ hole. (I was really hoping to find the 1/8” hole version)

I thought using hot glue was a great idea. But I needed to test it. I decided to add a 3/16″ dowel to the quilting thread drawer to store the bobbins. I usually keep several extra bobbins ready with white quilting thread because I hate to stop and make new ones. So an extra dowel would be very useful.

One of the dowels was a little crooked and loose so I tried to pull it out. Scheesch. That glue really held. But I persevered, pulled that sucker out and hot glued the new thinner dowel in. WHAT A MESS! Just a drip in the hole wasn’t enough so I put some around the sides. Then it dried immediately. I couldn’t even pry the excess glue away with my little screw driver.

The smaller dowel is really sturdy though and nicely holds four bobbins! (Five if I didn’t have that gob of cooled hot glue around the bottom!)

2. Buy pegboard with 1/8” holes and just use 1/8” dowels. (No sanding necessary.) then you can use regular glue. (Providing 1/8” doweling fits in the bobbin hole—I’ve had my thinking cap on for a few hours but haven’t measured the bobbin hole size, nor do I know which size pegboard I have.)

Couldn’t test this because on my Home Depot visit there was only one size pegboard. Bummer. The smallest dowel was 3/16″. Just want to point out that I’m quite aware that this dowel should only be 1/16″ smaller than the 1/4″ dowel. Right? But it sure looks like a bigger difference in comparison!

Sometimes the suggestions I get are just common sense. Mmmmmm. Nope that will not work.

But all of Susan’s ideas were very good and it was fun trying the different options that she suggested. I love testing different ideas especially if I can easily get the products.

Susan, I hope I was able to help you out a bit!

Anyone have any questions about my projects, send me an email or make a comment! I’ll try to get you some answers!