Now that I have a serger, I adapt a lot of my patterns to use it. Today I’m making a dress that can be 95% overlocked. But zippers and darts still need the conventional sewing machine and I want matching thread for these seams. Instead of buying a separate spool of thread, I’ve wound a mini-spool from my cone of overlock thread.

It’s easy to do. Put the overlock thread cone in a coffee mug on the table behind the machine - this will prevent the it from bouncing around as it unspools. Use this thread to set up your bobbin-winding apparatus as usual and wind two bobbins from the cone. Use one in the bobbin case and slip the other over your machine’s spool rod. Voila! enough thread to do darts, zippers, and hems.