Inside the thread rack

Behind every design in the catalogue is a recipe: an ordered list of thread codes the machine runs through. We keep 2,666 of those recipes on file and a rack of 233 Gunold colours to run them. Five of those colours do most of the work.

The five threads in most recipes

• Cream 1378: in 1,289 of 2,666 recipes. Outlines, highlights, the light side of fur.
• Navy 1005: in 966 recipes. Lettering and the dark side of almost everything.
• Tawny Tan 1056: in 694 recipes. The base colour of the bear, the moose and the deer.
• DK Brown 1130: in 443 recipes. Shadow on the same animals.
• Red 1043: in 442 recipes. Maple leaves, flags and accent lettering.

Cream and Navy together are the wildlife library. Almost every animal is built from a tan base, a brown shadow, a cream highlight and a navy outline, with the destination name in navy or cream depending on the garment. That is why the library looks like one hand drew it.

Thread changes

The average recipe changes thread five times. The longest on file changes 21 times. TOTE, a Vancouver design, runs 16 changes across 26,692 stitches, which is why it is the most expensive design per unit in the top twenty. A change costs time on the head, so a recipe with five changes and 6,000 stitches runs in a fraction of the time TOTE does.

Why this matters to a buyer

• A recipe that uses the five core threads runs on any garment colour on the colour card without a rethink.
• A namedrop adds about 300 stitches and no thread change, because the lettering reuses a colour already in the recipe.
• A custom colour outside the rack means a new cone and a strike-off. Possible, but slower than a stock recipe.

The stitch counts, thread changes and colourways for every public design are on the numbers page and on each product page in the catalogue. If you are building a new design through the custom embroidery program, the digitizer will start from these five threads.