DMC embroidery kits: what's actually sold under that name (and which one you need)

"I'm looking for a DMC embroidery kit." It's one of the most common things people ask us, and it almost always needs a follow-up question, because three completely different products get sold under that name. None of them is a mistake: DMC is the best-known thread maker in Europe, and its name ended up standing for anything with its thread inside. The catch is that, depending on which of the three you ask for, you take home something quite different.

Let's separate them.

1. A kit made by DMC

These exist, and they're small and beautifully put together, but watch out: almost none of them are needlepoint. DMC mostly makes cross-stitch and surface embroidery kits, worked on soft fabric rather than on canvas. In our shop you will find them filed under the needlepoint heading, because that is where people look for them, but the technique inside is a different one, and each listing says so.

A surface-embroidery example from our shelves: Water Garden and Poetic Carnations come with seven 8-metre skeins of mouliné, two printed 26 × 26 cm cotton fabrics, a needle, a 15.7 cm hoop and instructions. You don't cover the fabric: you draw with thread, combining back stitch, stem stitch, satin stitch, French knots and buttonhole wheels. It's a different technique, and that's exactly why they're rated intermediate.

And a cross-stitch example: The Tiger in the River, a 30 × 15 cm landscape format on midnight-blue Aida, with fabric, threads, chart and needle inside.

They're lovely kits for a long afternoon or as a present. What they aren't is a needlepoint picture.

2. Another brand's kit whose threads are DMC

This is the one nobody expects and the one most people are actually after. A needlepoint kit already comes with all its thread inside, in the design's exact colours, so you never buy DMC separately: of the 81 listings in our catalogue that state a colour count, the median is 16. What the box almost never tells you is whose thread it is — and it doesn't matter, as long as the kit is complete.

So if what you have in mind is a picture to stitch "with DMC threads", the thing you're looking for probably doesn't say DMC on the front. You'll find them all in our needlepoint kits, with printed canvas, threads and tapestry needle included.

3. Loose DMC thread to finish a kit you already own

The third is the most practical one: a colour ran out halfway through, or you've inherited an old kit that's missing a skein. Here you don't need a kit, you need thread.

And not just any thread: to cover canvas, the reference is DMC Retors Mat Art. 89, a single-strand matte cotton, available in 286 colours and sold by the single skein with a colour selector. Six-strand mouliné, which is DMC's most famous thread, does not cover canvas: it's made for stitching on fabric, not for filling a grid.

If the references are making your head spin, two guides go straight at it: 286 DMC thread colours: how to choose yours and what Retors Mat Art. 89 is and how to work out how many skeins you need.

So which one do I ask for?

• I want a large picture to frame, without counting stitches → a needlepoint kit with printed canvas. The brand on the box doesn't matter; what matters is that it comes "with threads".
• I want something small for one afternoon, hoop included → a DMC-branded kit, cross-stitch or surface embroidery.
• I want to finish something I already have → single skeins of Retors Mat, picking the shade from the chart.
• I want to give it as a gift and don't know the recipient's level → we break it down in embroidery kits as a gift.

The needle counts too

An easily missed detail: the cross-stitch needle and the needlepoint needle are not the same, even though both are blunt. Canvas takes a tapestry needle, and the size depends on how coarse the canvas is: we stock sizes 18, 20 and 22, from thickest to finest. Which one goes with what is in which needle to use for each project.

What we carry from the brand lives in the DMC collection: 11 references between branded kits, Retors Mat by the skein and the thread cabinet (plus two macramé kits that ended up there by association).