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Match thread colors

Matching ties each color in your design to a real thread from a brand chart, so you know which spool to load and your run sheet names the actual thread. Do it before you stitch, especially after importing artwork whose colors came from a screen rather than a thread rack.

Where colors live​

Your design's thread colors are the strip on the bottom bar, centered under the canvas, with a + at its end to add one. Click a swatch to make it the drawing color, which also recolors whatever you have selected. Edit colors opens the full palette editor in a popover: add, rename, edit a color, match to a thread chart, reduce the palette, and Manage palettes…

The Colors panel is gone

It used to be a dockable panel of its own. It moved to the bottom bar in v1.2.2. Everything it did is still in the Edit colors popover.

Deleting a color​

Deleting a color that objects are using recolors them to a surviving swatch, rather than leaving them painted in a thread that is no longer in the palette. One Ctrl/Cmd+Z reverses the whole thing. If you delete the active color, the drawing color moves too, so you are never drawing in something that does not exist.

Applying a palette​

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

Tell Boldbobbin which threads you own​

Open Design palettes (Edit colors → Manage palettes…, or Settings → Design palettes…) and go to the Threads tab. Pick the thread charts (brand catalogs) you own. These become your owned threads. You can also set this during the first-run wizard or in Settings → Threads.

Match one color​

  1. In the Design palettes dialog (Current tab), click Match… (or Re-match) on a color. You can also open the color with Edit in the Edit colors popover: it is the same picker.
  2. Edit color opens on its thread search, sorted Closest first. Each row says how close it is (Exact, Very close, Close, Similar, Far); hover it for the exact color difference (0 is identical).
  3. The Thread chart menu picks where to look: All your charts (the ones you own) first, then any single chart from All charts, A to Z. Search by code, name, or hex.
  4. Click a thread, then Save, or double-click it to use it at once. The color takes the thread's color, name, and weight. Unlink thread removes the link and keeps the color.

As of v1.3.2 this is the color picker, which replaced the separate Match thread dialog. It searches every chart, not only the ones you own; owning a chart just puts it first.

Match the whole palette at once​

In the Current tab, use Match automatically to my threads. It picks, from the charts you own, the thread that looks closest to each color. To force a distinct thread for every color, turn on Different colors to different threads: this needs at least as many owned threads as you have colors.

Matching automatically also sets each color's thread weight from its chart.

If you have no owned threads, automatic matching is unavailable until you enable some charts. See Threads and palettes.

Example: matching to the threads on your rack

You stock Isacord Polyester and Madeira Polyneon.

  1. Open Design palettes and, in the Threads tab, tick those two charts.
  2. Go to the Current tab and click Match automatically to my threads. Each color now names an Isacord or Polyneon thread, at 40 wt.
  3. If two colors landed on the same spool and you want them kept apart, turn on Different colors to different threads and match again.
  4. Export a run sheet: it lists those thread codes in stitch order.