Created from embroidery experience to help you choose colours with confidence.
Match & Stitch is an online colour-matching and conversion tool created especially for embroiderers.
One of our founders is an embroiderer and jewellery designer herself. She specialises in haute couture embroidery, embroidered jewellery, three-dimensional forms and textile wall art, so she knows how difficult it can be to choose the right colours for a new piece.
Even in a physical shop, the choice can feel overwhelming. There may be hundreds of threads in subtly different hues, shades and tones, and poor lighting can make the decision even harder. You may also discover that a particular thread or bead is unavailable from your local supplier.
We understand how important colour is to the beauty of embroidery. A harmonious combination can transform a design, while even a small difference in hue or tone can affect the final result. When threads and beads are used together, finding colours that work well alongside one another becomes especially important.
Before developing Match & Stitch, we searched for a reliable way to match embroidery threads with seed beads for our own work. We explored websites, consulted books and contacted suppliers, but the information we found was often incomplete or inconsistent. Some sources suggested colours that did not match closely, while others listed incorrect thread or bead numbers.
When we realized that we could not find the tool we needed, we decided to create it ourselves.
Match & Stitch was created for you - for your ideas, your skills and the care you bring to every piece. We want to help you choose colours with confidence and create embroidery that stays as close as possible to your original vision.
Match & Stitch was co-founded by a team of embroidery and jewellery designers, colour specialists and software engineers. By combining decades of practical stitching experience with structured colour data and modern technology, we have created the tool we had long wished to use ourselves.
We spent months physically comparing DMC and Anchor embroidery threads with Miyuki Delica seed beads. Together, these collections include an extensive range of colours, tones and finishes.
Our aim was to identify the closest possible match for every thread and bead in our current libraries. We plan to add more manufacturers in the future, but you can already use Match & Stitch to find corresponding colours across the DMC, Anchor and Miyuki Delica collections.
And we did not stop at direct colour matching.
Match & Stitch lets embroiderers search for threads and beads using imaginative or poetic colour descriptions.
You may know that your design needs an arctic blue, stormy grey or sea-foam green, without knowing the corresponding product number. Descriptive colour names are rarely used consistently by online shops or in manufacturers' official colour charts, which can make the right shade difficult to find.
To make this type of search possible, we have mapped thread and bead colours to a wide range of descriptive and poetic names. Simply enter the colour you have in mind and explore the closest options from our thread and bead collections.
We have also created a separate selection of Miyuki Delica beads called Creative Match.
These beads are not intended to be exact matches for the original thread colour. Instead, they complement it through a subtle variation in hue, tone or finish. A Creative Match can add depth, contrast or character to an embroidered piece while remaining harmonious with the original colour.
Creative Matches are not available for every thread. When one appears, it means that we have selected a bead which we believe could bring an elegant and considered variation to your design.
You can upload an image, photograph or drawing and use Match & Stitch to convert it into a practical embroidery design.
Depending on the selected criteria, the result may include:
The design process is informed by our own practical embroidery experience and is intended to give you a useful starting point for further creative work.
We have also developed Hoopy: an AI-assisted design tool specifically for embroiderers. Describe the design you have in mind, refine your instructions with the help of the Hoopy and generate an embroidery concept based on your ideas.
The resulting package may include a design, an embroidery plan and a materials legend with suggested threads and beads.
This gives you another way to develop an initial idea into a more structured and practical design for embroidery.
Match & Stitch currently allows you to:
Even at this stage, the service brings together several tools that previously required separate sources, manual research and considerable time.
Our libraries will continue to grow. In the future, we hope to add more thread manufacturers, bead collections and other embroidery materials, including sequins.
Reliable colour matching, however, is a slow and detailed process. Each new collection introduces many potential combinations, all of which must be reviewed and compared carefully.
Rather than wait until every possible material had been included, we decided to make the collections we have already completed available to embroiderers now.
We hope Match & Stitch becomes a useful part of your embroidery process and that you will feel confident recommending it to fellow embroiderers.
Our colour libraries will continue to develop, and we welcome your suggestions whenever you believe a closer match may be available.
We are also open to partnerships with online shops and specialist retailers that sell embroidery threads and beads. Retailers are welcome to contact us to discuss integrating the Match & Stitch colour-matching tool into their own website.
Embroiderers, tutors and creators with an established social media presence are also invited to contact us about testing the service and introducing it to their audience.
Your feedback and experience can help us refine Match & Stitch and make it more useful for the wider embroidery community.
With care for every stitch
Match & Stitch
Where precision meets artistry
