Most stitchers know DMC threads by names as well as numbers, but the DMC company has never released an official set of names. Until now?

At the start of June, DMC updated its website. There have been a few issues, such as free patterns requiring a credit card, many links breaking, and redirects not working too. But they also updated their threads page.
In my mind, it’s much harder to look at threads as a whole, but the new design gives far more information on each individual thread.
And with it, names of threads!

 

Are There Official Thread Names?

Let’s get this out the way first; the DMC company has NEVER supplied an official list of names. People often refer to the names of threads based on three lists.
– A list supplied by DMC in 2013 that states they are non-official names
– A custom list a retailer, pattern designer, or pattern software uses
– The custom list of our very own DMC inventory spreadsheet (which has now become the most popular list of names)
But none of these are official. If you ask DMC, they’ll say there are no official names. Even if you ask them right this minute.

The Website Update!

So they’ve updated their website; this happens a lot. I won’t bore you with the details, but I look at websites for my job and I can tell you that they’ve changed the theme that sits on their website. This means that they are able to show more information than they previously did, and they’ve taken advantage of that to show information on threads.

At the top of each thread, they have four bits of information:

• Thread Type
• Thread Number
• The New Thread Name
• Internal Thread Code

 
Now we know that that last code is an internal code, and DMC do share these codes with retailers (it’s how they order more threads), but these aren’t consumer-facing codes at all. I strongly suspect that these codes shouldn’t be on the website.

With that in mind, these could be internal names too. But for what purpose would you have both internal names, which are never shared with anyone, and also internal codes?

Are They Official Names?

We sadly, just don’t know!
We reached out to a few DMC representatives who assured us that there were no names for threads, and the website simply didn’t have them. Once we supplied proof, they all said they’d contact their IT department about it.
This further supports the idea that these names shouldn’t have been shared online. Or at least; just yet.
You see, adding extra info to a website, that you have no intention of using, is simply crazy. And to convert them to all the languages the DMC website uses as well. To me, it seems that at some point, DMC is planning to push these names out.
The fact that a few are incorrect (for example 4513 is down as “Bright White”) suggests that at the very least these are not perfect.

How Are The Names?

Pretty good! Each thread has its own name (4 exceptions which share 2 names), across their solid color threads, Etoile, Variations, Metallics, and Coloris threads.
Each thread name matches the color in hue too. For example, 3031 a dark brown is “Brazil Nut”. The color 3031 is a really fantastic match to that of a Brazil Nut shell.
None of the color families seem to match names at all, there are no “light Brazil Nut” for example, so each color is completely separate.
And finally, for some reason, there are loads of animals!

 
Whilst almost all names do differ from anything else published to date, a few do still match up, for example 307, called “Lemon” by most, remains as Lemon.

Are The Names About To Be Released?

Possibly.
With any new website update, there’s usually a wider reason behind it, and new names and new threads are likely to be part of that. We’ve been covering a few thread-based stories which will come out in the upcoming weeks, but it all points to DMC doing something this summer, which is when they usually release new products. They updated their list of replacement threads to an official list only last month, showing that they are making changes internally.
We also know that the DMC company are a bit cagey with releases, and doesn’t tell influencers until the last minute. And we also know that DMC are terrible at keeping secrets. We launched the story of the ‘new’ 2013 DMC threads, and found out that influencers weren’t able to talk about it for another 10 days when they officially released.

What Are The Full List Of Names?

Obviously, there are way too many names to publish here, but we have a list you can download here, and as soon as the names launch, we’ll release an update to our DMC thread inventory spreadsheet.
 
 
Tell us what you think about these new names! Do you think DMC will release an official name list after all these years?

Happy stitching!
Lord Libidan