COLOUR CHARTS & CONVERSIONS

Hello everyone, hope all’s going well with you? We are rapidly moving into winter here in the Western Cape, as you slowly move into Summer!

Did you know that there is a DISCOVER & LEARN facility on my site, that includes help and resources for embroidery? This facility can be found in the main menu on my homepage and includes everything you need to know about hand embroidery, including information on materials, Stitch guide, access to videos, how to finish your embroidery, a list of worldwide Stockists and general help on payments, downloads etc.

This week I would like to introduce the Embroidery Thread & Colour Charts. I have spent many months in collaboration with Krisztina Toth the owner of Stitch Palettes, a fantastic Thread Palette generator. I commissioned Krisztina to create Colour charts and substitutes for the most popular brands of embroidery thread. In the next post I will talk more about Krisztina and her wonderful service to the Needlework community but for now lets take a look at these thread resources.

Embroidery Threads

This page gives information on the different types of thread that I use for Needlepainting & Whitework embroidery – what they are used for and how they are used.

Colour Charts

On this page you will be able to access Shade cards for DMC, Cosmo, Anchor & Au Ver A Soie threads, which are the four brands of thread I use most often in my embroidery designs. Each shade card has been scanned at a high resolution from the original shade card and provides easy viewing of the full range of colours.

Thread Conversions.

On this pages you will find thread conversions for:

DMC to Cosmo, Anchor, Soie d’alger, Gutermann, Eterna silk, and other information pertaining to threads or substitutes used in my books etc. It is not possible to provide exact matches, but these charts have been painstakingly matched by hand ensuring the most accurate substitutes possible.

The shades are listed in order of light to dark for a particular colour family on the chart. Each number has a corresponding number and swatch sample, so you can easily find a particular shade within that family. When substituting shades for any of my embroidery patterns, it is recommended that you look closely at the shades to be matched and choose shades from the same colour family wherever possible, so that they are of a similar tone and blend well.

The charts can be freely used and printed out for personal use, but please adhere to copyright rules as far as commercial use is concerned.

Freedom Of Choice.

As you know I recently did a survey on my Blog asking you to comment on which brands of stranded cotton thread you prefer to use and are easiest to source. I received over 160 replies which was very helpful, but the end result revealed that preferences for certain brands, were dependent on where you reside in the world and obviously the brand which is easiest to source in any specific country. Although DMC seems to be the most popular choice, there are many instances where you preferred another brand for ease of use and colour selection or in some instances other brands were easier to source.

I have thoroughly tested DMC, Cosmo and Anchor and found them to be very similar in quality and they can successfully be used together in a design. Needlepainting requires numerous shades to achieve a realistic effect and it can be frustrating when a specific shade is not available. It is just sad that I have to be limited or rather sacrifice the beauty of an embroidery project for the sake of one or two shades, so I would love the freedom to choose from a wider selection of shades, but this often means I have to look outside the DMC range. These conversion charts allow you the freedom to choose from whichever brand is easiest for you to source in your specific part of the world.

We will talk more about these brands of thread in a future blog post. In the meantime, wherever you are in the world, keep smiling and happy stitching.

Trish