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Threads and palettes

Every object has a color, chosen from the design's palette. This page covers how to pick and manage those colors, how to tie each one to a real thread you can buy, and what a thread's weight changes. The palette lives on the bottom bar, centered under the canvas (it was at the bottom left before v1.3.2).

drawing in Cherry
Reproduction of the colors strip on the bottom bar, with the default Boldbobbin palette (Charcoal / Muslin / Cherry). Click a swatch to make it the drawing color; "Edit colors" opens the full palette.

The palette​

The colors strip on the bottom bar is the everyday quick-pick: the Edit colors button, a row of the design's swatches, and a + (Add color) at the end. Click a swatch to make it the active color, which also recolors anything you have selected. + opens the color picker to add one.

Edit colors opens the full palette editor in a popover, which is a grid of swatches with a one-row detail bar underneath for whichever color is active:

  • Drag swatches to reorder them.
  • The + tile at the end of the grid adds a color.
  • In the detail bar: double-click the name to rename it, or use Edit (pencil) and Remove (trash). Remove is hidden when only one color is left.
  • Manage opens the Design palettes dialog.
  • Reduce merges close colors across the whole design: see below.
This used to be a dockable panel

The Colors panel was retired in v1.2.2: it took a whole dock for a row of swatches. Everything it did is in the Edit colors popover.

Deleting a color, and applying a palette​

Deleting a color that objects are using recolors them to a surviving swatch, rather than leaving them painted in a thread that has been removed from the palette. One Ctrl/Cmd+Z reverses the whole thing, and if you delete the active color the drawing color moves too.

Applying a saved palette keeps the colors your design is actually using, rather than clearing everything and orphaning the objects that referenced them.

The color picker​

Reworked in v1.3.2. The same picker opens from the strip's +, from the + tile and Edit in the Edit colors popover, from Match… in Design palettes, from the shape picker, and from the pixel editor. It is titled Add a color or Edit color, and confirms with Add color or Save. (The small swatch in the Properties panel still opens the quick palette-and-hex popover.)

It has three columns:

  • Your color: a saturation square and hue bar, the color code in HEX, RGB, or HSL (a toggle picks the format), the eyedropper, the Name, and the swatches already In this palette.
  • Threads: every thread from the charts, searchable by code, name, or hex. The Thread chart menu starts with All your charts (the ones you own), then lists All charts, A to Z, each with its thread weight. Order sorts by Closest first or Chart order, and each row says how close it is: Exact, Very close, Close, Similar, or Far. Double-click a row to use it at once.
  • The thread: a Thread preview, a small swatch of real stitches in this thread, drawn the way Realistic mode draws it (flat lines where Realistic is unavailable); the Weight (see below); and the Thread it is linked to, with Use my color and Unlink thread.

Picking a thread takes its color, name, weight, and chart link in one undo step. Mark the charts you own in Design palettes → Threads and they come first in the list.

This replaced the separate Match thread dialog and the old picker's "Suggested" strip.

Picking a color off the screen​

The color picker has an eyedropper button beside the color code: "Pick a color from the screen." What it can reach depends on your browser and platform:

  • In Chrome or Edge, and in the Windows desktop app, it samples any pixel anywhere on your screen, including outside Boldbobbin.
  • On the macOS desktop app, and in Firefox and Safari, it samples inside the Boldbobbin window instead, with a magnified loupe following your cursor. That still covers your design and any reference image you've placed.

Press Esc to cancel. The picked color lands in the color code field, so nothing changes until you confirm.

Thread weight​

New in v1.3.2. Each palette color can carry the weight printed on the spool: 12, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, or 80 wt. A higher number is a finer thread. Set it in the color picker, or from the weight menu on each color in Design palettes → Current. Picking a chart thread, or Match automatically to my threads, sets the weight the chart sells it at.

A color with no weight counts as 40 wt, the standard machine-embroidery thread, so nothing about an older design changes.

What the weight changes:

  • Realistic mode, realistic PNG export, and video export draw each thread at its real width (a 60 wt visibly finer than a 40, a 12 wt nearly twice as wide). The plain Stitch view does not change.
  • The density analysis measures each thread's coverage at its own width.
  • The run sheet PDF prints a weight you set yourself (never the assumed 40).

What it does not change: the stitches. Row spacing and density are not adjusted for the weight, so a fine thread needs a closer spacing from you, and a heavy one a wider spacing. Machine files do not record weight either.

For example, set a satin border's color to 12 wt for a bold, hand-stitched look: Realistic mode shows it nearly twice as thick, and Analysis counts the extra coverage. The stitches stay the same, so widen the spacing yourself if Analysis shows the thread piling up.

Color reduction​

If a design ended up with more thread colors than you'd like (often from importing artwork), Reduce in the Edit colors popover merges colors that look alike, across the whole design, to cut down on color changes. Set the Merge distance, watch the preview update ("N colors → M"), and confirm. It has nothing to merge on a design with only one color, and says so if your distance is too small to merge anything.

For example, an imported logo that came in with five nearly identical blues can come down to one blue: raise Merge distance until the preview shows the count you want, then confirm. One Ctrl/Cmd+Z brings the colors back if you went too far.

This is a different tool from the SVG importer's own Match close colors option (which only affects that one import): see Import an SVG.

Design palettes dialog​

The Design palettes dialog has three tabs:

  • Current: add, rename, reorder, and match the colors in this design.
  • Saved: save the current palette as a named preset and re-apply it to other designs later. You can also Export a palette to a .json file and Import one back.
  • Threads: pick which thread brands ("charts") you own.

Thread charts​

Boldbobbin bundles thread charts from many brands (for example Madeira, Isacord, Robison-Anton, Sulky, Brother, DMC, Aurifil, and more). You tell Boldbobbin which charts you own in the Threads tab (or during first-run setup); those become your owned threads.

As of v1.3.2 there are 68 charts. Many codes, names, and colors were corrected to match the manufacturers' own color cards, two duplicate charts were dropped (Coats Alcazar Jazz and MTB - Embroidex Standard), and two were relabelled (Madeira "Matt" is now Frosted Matt; the brand "New" is now New brothread). A design you already matched keeps the threads it stored; the corrections show up in new picks and matches.

Matching a palette color to a thread​

Boldbobbin matches colors the way the eye sees them, so the nearest thread is the one that looks closest, not just the one that is closest by the numbers.

  • Match… / Re-match on a palette color opens the color picker on its thread search, nearest first. See Match thread colors.
  • Match automatically to my threads (in the Current tab of Design palettes) matches every palette color at once, from the charts you own, and sets each color's weight from its chart. Turn on Different colors to different threads to force a one-to-one assignment (needs at least as many owned threads as colors).

When you confirm a match, the design remembers the exact thread (brand, chart, code), so your run sheet PDF can name the real thread.