And came up with a TIME SAVING battery operated tool to organize craft supplies faster.
We started with an idea and a Kickstarter campaign with this story.
It is a light-duty winding tool. A handy tool to assist you when you need to organize embroidery thread, shorter lengths of yarn, ribbon and trim. When using it you can now spend more time on your craft and less time winding.
It all started when my husband got tired of hearing me complain about how much time I was wasting when organizing my embroidery thread with a little hand tool. Inserting and removing the little embroidery floss card was not convenient. It was all so time consuming and frustrating to wind with the small tool.
As a DIYer, my husband understands the importance of having proper tools to get a job done. For peace of mind, he was on a mission to find a solution! Like any amazing spouse, mine seems to find pleasure in solving problems for me. First, after doing some research, we found that there seemed to be no product on the market we could use to make the winding both easier and faster.
We then did some brainstorming, came up with an idea, and decided to make our own battery operated tool. Since I knit and sew as well, a product that is not limited to just embroidery thread seemed to be a better goal. I like multi-functional tools…I mean who doesn’t?!
We first started with a simple geared motor kit for toys to see if we could come up with something. Great ideas and a good proof of concept came up immediately.
Working together, using some basic woodworking and electrical skills, the first primitive prototype of the winder was born! We were absolutely thrilled with it and nicknamed it Woody.
We soon realized that other crafters would appreciate using a tool like this as well.
Months later after much research and development and with the help of an extremely talented and patient engineer, we created…The Versatile Winder.
We thought of as many features as possible, from the size, controls, even the speed at which it winds! Yes, we sat and gradually increased the speed with every single prototype, testing in between to achieve an optimal winding speed. We then added a speed controller to make it even easier to use by going fast or slow.
It’s always helpful to have an extra pair of hands. So by securely clamping the winder to a table allows your hands to be free to control the switch dial and gently guide the item you are winding.
It was the ingenuity of our engineer, Muhammad Mostafa Elbassuny who designed a non slip platform to hold a simple clip that allows the winder to hold different sizes of cards and made it easy to both insert and remove the card.
You can wind with readily available embroidery cards which can be used comfortably when winding at a higher speed.
You can insert bigger cards for fair isle or intarsia knitting (which work well at a lower speed.) This is also a great way to re-purpose all those used plastic gift cards and keep them out of the landfill.
Or you can use yarn bobbins specially designed for winding shorter lengths of yarn and picture knitting.
Since we started developing this product, we have used both Woody and the prototype countless times. And I love it more and more with each use. We also found so many different uses for it. I’m sure you will find more
We have decided to source many of the key components and assemble The Versatile Winder in North America. By doing this, we understand that this increases some of our costs, we are adamant on assembling it locally. It’s the best way for us to maintain control over the quality of The Versatile Winder. This is very important to us. Also, assembling locally will improve our time to market. Not only that, but with the current supply chain issues we find ourselves in, going with local manufacturing seems to be a no brainer.
When we did not reach our goal for the Kickstarter campaign, we were disappointed. However, we were determined to bring this project to life. So we worked harder. We experienced a few glitches. Along the way we made a design change and improved the grip. It’s still easy to insert and remove and works with different sized cards.
And we are so proud to announce that it is finally here.
