Ordering online - colors
 

There's a quite a few sites with quilting thread on the cones. They do show color samples. How accurate are those colors if you are trying to color match?

A color will look flat gray on the screen, but when you get it, it has a green or blue cast. The color number will be the same, but the dye lot is different.

I do Photoshop, so I can calibrate my desktop monitor to "what you see is what you get"
Are the color samples right? The only way I could be sure is if they used Pantone.

Colors change from year to year. I like rust and burgundy in Southwestern colors, and if I go to use fabric that is more than 2 years old and have run out of thread - this years colors don't match.

Do you send a sample of fabric?

Regardless of how you can tweek your PC to view colors, the original photograph that was taken could be off. I've not found the colors on the PC to be terribly accurate when trying to get a true match.

The best option is to get a color card from your favorite thread manufacturer. The color cards are accurate.
If you have the card, choose the thread you want then buy that color number.

Most will gladly ship a sample sheet to you for a small fee! Call or e-mail them and they'll instruct you. Went through that myself. Looked for a medium grey and wound up with a gold. That was a surprise! LOL!

Thanks. I knew embroidery thread had color sheets, didn't realize quilting cotton spools had one, too.
The PC tweak is great for printing photos, though.
I guess I'll ask both of those companies for a card. I don't mind paying for one.

I think this must have been true of some fabric I ordered, that looked aqua/turquoise on my monitor. When it came it was absolutely blue, without a hint of green. My monitor has usually pretty accurate about fabric orders, so that was an unpleasant surprise.

Daffy

I just took a picture of a completed quilt top. One corner of it came out blue instead of the green of the rest of it. Go figure!

Some of the fabric websites have the RGB color samples at the top of their catalog screens, presumably so you can calibrate your computer screen to their colors? I've never bothered myself, and I've never noticed if any of the thread pages have those color blocks at the top. Perhaps something to look for?

Alison

I order a lot of fabric online. For me, the colors always seem to be fine----it is the sheen of the fabric. I love certain brands; however, I have found that even within the same brand, some fabrics have an absolutely wonderful hand/sheen; and some are close to "rags"...maybe that is a bit rough; but some are not quite the fiber I have expected.
I wish that the fabric manufacturers could come up with some way of telling us about the "Hand" of the fiber.
Once, I purchased quite a few yards of a fabric online from one of my online favorite vendors, to make a curtain. OMG! I hate it!!!!!! The colors are accurate, but the feel of the fabric....can you say, "Rag for windows????"
If anyone has any insight into this please post! If you work for a fabric manufacturer, tell your people; this is a problem!!!
Thanks!!!

I know that Aurifil and King Tut have color cards available, so I'm sure others do also. I understand your problem with the fabric. I ordered some fabric and the colors were good, but the fabric itself was loosely woven and of poor quality. I called the company as soon as I opened the package. They were very nice about giving me a return number and refunding my money (less shipping charges, of course). I just wouldn't trust their descriptions enough to order fabric again, though.

I can calibrate screen, but unless they give me the Pantone numbers, I'd never be sure. I have Pantone cards.
I've written to a couple of companies to see if they do have a chart either free or for sale. I'd buy it.

I bought some cone thread from Connecting Threads. It was white, so no problem. No one in town sells the larger spools. I use cones on the serger, and can manage just fine with some of the colors they sell. However, it's the color
cast that some threads have. I'd like to get some spools in the basic colors I want, so I don't run out when I can't get any more in the middle of a project.