How to Slice Up Aurifil Thread Colour Card

It finally happened! It’s only been on my to-do list for…well, let’s not focus on that bit – ha! Instead, let’s focus on the fact that I finally cut it up and I’m showing you how to slice up your Aurifil Thread Colour Card.

• Super simple to do.
• Super handy to have on hand.
• Super inspiring to peruse those colours.

Get all this just from slicing up a colour card 😉 I’m sharing how in today’s step-by-step tutorial.

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Inspiration

Now, I can’t take credit for coming up with this ingenious idea. I’m not entirely sure where I noticed this hack first. It was either Kitty (of Night Quilter) or Yvonne (of QuiltingJet Girl), but both of those ladies have encouraged me to slice up my own set.

I want to say they shared this tip on Aurifil’s blog (found it! You can read the tutorial here), or maybe it was on Instagram. Either way, after I noticed the photo, I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind!

How to cut up your Aurifil Thread colour card

Since I sliced mine up without taking photos along the way (sorry!), I’ve broken the steps down 1-by-1 so that you know:

• How long it takes
• What you’ll need
• The 5-step process

I then cover some non-tutorial topics that I thought you might find helpful, such as:

• Where I store mine (in case you need some ideas!)
• How it’s made things better
• What I regret

Ok, let’s dive in!

How long does it take?

Less than 10 minutes.

The longest part was researching where to find binder rings – ha! And I left most of that up to my hubz. So, really a super quick hack.

This is often the case with tasks that seem to linger on my to-do list.

Hope this encourages you that it’s 10 minutes well spent.

What you’ll need

Here are all the notions and tools I pulled out to slice my thread colour card up:

• Aurifil Thread Colour Card – the original version (they’ve since updated their format, which you can find here, and avoid all the effort of slicing 😉)
• Rotary cutter – I used one that I reserve for paper (don’t use your fabric one!)
• Ruler – this will help keep your cuts nice and straight
• Cutting mat – you don’t want to damage your table
• Hole punch
• Binder ring – you’re going to need a pretty big one. My hubz got me this set, which had the perfect size.

Step 1

Star by unfolding your Aurifil Thread colour card.

This will help you identify the different panels that you’ll be initially slicing the card into in the next step.

Step 2

Locate the fold lines between each of the colour card panels.

You want to start by slicing on (or just next to) those creases. This will make sub-cutting the strips easier.

Tip – make sure you’re using your paper rotary cutter and not the one you use for your pretty fabric!

Step 3

Now you can sub-cut each of the thread strips into 1.5″ strips.

Make sure you’re leaving about 1/8″ on the left side of the thread colour numbers. You want to preserve those numbers!

Step 4

Use a hole punch to add a hole at the top of each of your strips, and then have fun loading those pretty strips on your binder ring in the colour order of your choice!

Step 5

Easily pull your thread colour strips off your ring whenever you need to decide on your next thread selection for quilting.

Where I store mine

I used to store the full set of colour cards in a closet in my office. But now that my thread colour cards are all cut up and looking pretty on the binder ring, I’ve decided to hang it on my thread rack on the wall behind my sewing machine.

It’s the perfect spot to add some pretty eye candy to my sewing room (aka the dining room – ha!) and makes it super easy to just grab and sort through to select the perfect thread colour for my quilts.

How it’s made things better

The biggest benefit of having sliced up my colour cards is that I can easily sift through the colour range that I want to focus on, pull it off the binder ring and place those colour options directly on my quilt.

It didn’t take me long to put my own strips to good use. The other day, I pulled out my Pink Lemonade quilt to see whether I wanted to go with pink or yellow for my quilting thread.

It was so much easier to decide on the different colours this way. Before, I used to wrangle my quilt to hold it against the strips. Sometimes the colours were on different panels, making it tough to get a side-by-side comparison.

Thrilled to say, that’s no longer an issue!

What I regret

I think one of the reasons this task took me so long was because I was worried that I’d regret slicing into my set.

This worry should have been alleviated once I got my second set back in 2020 (if memory serves).

And, yet I still hesitated. Not sure why, but sometimes these things make me pause before I proceed.

Do I regret cutting into my colour cards?

Not for one minute – ha!

So, if you’re sitting on the fence wondering if you should slice into yours, I’m here to encourage you to take the plunge!

I hope this quick and handy tutorial helps you decide on whether to slice up your own Aurifil Thread Colour Card. And if you do, then I hope these steps see you through the process with ease!

Happy slicing,

Shannon

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