DMC Threads: A Beginner’s Guide

Almost every cross-stitch chart lists its colours as DMC numbers. Here is what that means, how to shop for thread without over-buying, and what the numbers on the label actually tell you.

What DMC floss is

DMC is a French thread manufacturer whose six-strand cotton embroidery floss has become the de-facto standard for cross stitch. Each shade has a code - 310 (black), blanc (white), 3799 (very dark pewter grey) - and because the range is standard and stocked worldwide, a chart can tell you exactly which threads to buy and you can buy them almost anywhere.

A skein is about 8 metres (8.7 yards) of six-strand floss, wrapped with two paper bands. The number is printed on the smaller band. Keep it: an unlabelled skein of mid-grey is indistinguishable from four other mid-greys, and matching it by eye later is genuinely difficult.

How the numbering works

The codes are not a colour system - they are catalogue numbers, accumulated over a century. Nearby numbers are often related (310/318/317 are greys; 3346/3347/3348 are a green family), but you cannot read a colour from a number the way you can with, say, Pantone. Named exceptions like Ecru, Blanc and B5200 (a brighter "snow white") sit outside the numeric range entirely.

A few families are worth knowing:

• Variegated threads (e.g. 4050s) shift colour along their length.
• Light Effects are metallic and fluorescent threads - beautiful, difficult, and best reserved for accents.
• Coloris and Étoile are specialty ranges with their own numbering.

For photo-derived charts you almost always want plain stranded cotton.

How many strands should you use?

Floss comes as six strands loosely twisted together, and you separate out the number you need. For cross stitch the usual answer is:

• Two strands for full cross stitches on 14- and 16-count Aida.
• One strand for backstitch outlines and fine detail.
• Three strands on 11-count, where the holes are further apart.

Always separate the strands one at a time from a cut length and put them back together before threading - the floss lies flatter and covers better than if you pull two out as a pair. This is covered properly in how many strands of floss to use.

How far does a skein go?

Rules of thumb, for two strands on 14-count Aida:

	Approximate
Thread used per full cross stitch	~2.5 cm (1 in) of 6-strand floss
Full crosses per 8 m skein	1,600-1,800
Backstitch per skein (1 strand)	~25 m of line

In practice this means most colours in a photo chart need one skein, and only the two or three dominant shades - and a large block of background - ever need more. That is why a thread list that gives you stitch counts is worth so much more than one that just lists codes: you can see at a glance that colour 3799 is used 4,200 times (buy three) while 3865 is used 90 times (buy one).

Buy a little extra of the dominant colours, and buy them at the same time. Dye lots vary slightly, and a mid-project top-up of a large background can show as a faint band.

Reading a thread list

A good chart legend gives you, per colour:

• the DMC code and name,
• the symbol used on the chart,
• the stitch count,
• skeins to buy, rounded up,
• and whether the colour is used for full stitches, backstitch, or both.

Take the list to the shop as-is. Resist substituting "close enough" shades in a photo chart - a portrait's colours are chosen relative to each other, and swapping one mid-tone for a neighbour can flatten a whole cheek.

If you need to convert to another brand (Anchor, Madeira, Cosmo), use a conversion table rather than matching by eye, and accept that conversions are approximate: the ranges do not line up one-to-one, and two DMC shades sometimes map to a single Anchor number.

Storage, in one paragraph

Cut a skein into working lengths of about 45 cm (18 in) - longer tangles and frays - and store them on bobbins or floss rings with the number written on. Keep the paper bands until the skein is wound. Any system works as long as the number survives; none works if it does not.

Buying for a photo chart

Charts generated from photos tend to use many shades of few families - a dozen browns for a dog, eight skin tones for a portrait. Two habits make that manageable:

1. Order the list by code before shopping. Shop racks are in numeric order.
2. Check the thread count column. Anything under ~200 stitches is comfortably one skein.

Every chart Stitcherry generates matches colours to the real DMC palette with perceptual (ΔE2000) matching, so the shopping list is honest and the shades are ones you can actually buy. If two of them turn out to be indistinguishable in the hand, or you already own one shade and not its neighbour, the editor replaces a thread everywhere it appears and the legend follows. Browse the shades in the DMC colour chart, or make a chart from a photo.