Blog - Yarn Rack With Motorized Yarn Winder

We designed this yarn stand from wood scraps around the house and added a motorized yarn winder repurposed from an old sewing machine motor. Last weekend I asked Andrew to build me a yarn stand while he had his tools out because I needed to keep my yarn neat and tidy while working on an afghan for our expected niece or nephew. What I thought was a five minute band-aid solution turned into a weekend long project that we are really pleased with and had a great time combining our creativity to make some thing that will be useful for years to come.

Instructions

Structure
The uprights are 6"x3/4" wide pine and about 4 feet high, it's what I had leftover from other projects, you can use whatever material you have. Inside the uprights I used 3/4" square pine to form J hooks for the spindles. Long strips were inset about 1" from the edge. Then small pieces of the square pine were cut to 1 3/4" long and used to form a J. You can see them in the pictures. The inside of the J should be 1" to allow extra room for the spindle to more around and keep it from binding. The spindles are 3/4" hardwood doweling.

The top is 10"x12" pine. The uprights are screwed in from the top, giving the distance between the J hooks 9". The bottom is another 10"x12" piece of pine, screwed to the bottom of the uprights. I then added two 14" lengths of 2x6 to the base for weight and stability. Taller towers would need more weight or longer feet, and shorter towers could do with less.

Spindles
Fixing CDs to the end of the spindles are not necessary, but they allow more yarn per spindle and help to prevent the yarn from tangling around the end of the dowling if the string gets too close the end while you're pulling out more yarn to work with.

Making the spindles
- Cut the dowels to 10 1/4" long
- Drill a 5/32 hole in each end
- Counter sink each hole
- Mark a line down one side, and 2 lines down the other. This helps match it up when putting it back together.
- Letter each side, always on top of the line.
- Cut left side 7/16" in from the end.
- Cut right side 7/16", and another 1/4".
- Sand ends
- Enlarge holes in the 3 cutoff pieces to 3/16"
- Reattach cutoff pieces, with a CD placed between each piece.