Has anyone ever MacGyvered way to have regular sewing machine hold thread cone?

I have only one cone of thread. I sewed a piece of tape to the base and hung the cone point down from the curtain rod over the window behind the electric sewing machine. This exposes it to ultra-violet, but it's basting thread.

I sewed a short piece of tape to the cone, then pinned that tape to a longer tape thrown over the curtain rod -- that would make it easy to swap out cones if I had more than one.

Surprise extra: the base of the paper cone has proven to be a good place to stash threaded hand-basting needles and discarded machine needles.

My machine has a lever on the back that has a hole in it close to the spool pin. When thread from a cone set in a cardboard box on the floor is drawn through this hole this hole, it is directed into the rest of the thread path. I used to sew from balls of thread bounding around in the box, but I seem to have lost the knack of preventing them from pulling unevenly on the thread, so I wind them off onto spools -- after putting them into a box on the floor and threading the machine as far as the take-up lever to leave both hand free for operating the winder.