Needlepoint silk color charts — Vineyard Silk, Silk & Ivory, Planet Earth, Pepperpot

The four silks, and what each is for

Vineyard Silk is a pure spun silk in a broad, saturated range — the one most Vineyard-branded canvases are painted to. It has the highest sheen of the four and shows every stitch direction, which is the point of it in a focal area and the argument against it in a large flat background.

Silk & Ivory is a silk and merino blend. Half the shine, a softer hand, and excellent coverage: it is the default background thread in a lot of shops, and the one to reach for when a canvas wants a silk look without the glare.

Planet Earth Silk and Planet Earth Pepperpot come from the same dye house. Pepperpot is the finer, single-strand put-up sized for 18-mesh; Planet Earth Silk is the heavier, pliable strand for lower mesh counts. Their ranges are dyed to a shared palette, so a Pepperpot number usually has a same-tone partner in the Planet Earth line.

Reading the chart

Each brand's chart lists every shade with its number, name and hex value, in the brand's own order. The dropdown above the chart switches brands without leaving the page; the DMC column in the detail panel shows the closest floss match for shopping or for converting a painted-canvas thread list to something a general craft shop carries.

Silk reads differently from cotton on screen and on canvas. A swatch is one lighting angle; a stitched silk shows the whole range between its highlight and its shadow. When two shades look close here, they will look closer in the skein and further apart once stitched in opposite directions.

Planning a needlepoint project in silk

The needlepoint wool calculator estimates yardage per color from your canvas size and mesh; silk put-ups are shorter than wool, so round up a skein. To design a canvas in these threads, convert a photo or start from a blank canvas and pick any of the four silks as the palette — the chart exports a per-color count that doubles as the shopping list. For crewel and tapestry wool instead, see the Appleton color chart.