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Old DMC Flosses & How to Replace Them.

by Kate Anderson on Jul 11, 2019

Old DMC Flosses & How to Replace Them.

Discontinued or hard-to-aquire DMC flosses & what to replace them with.

A bundle of DMC flosses sort of in a circle

If you've been an embroiderer for some time you will know how excited the world was when DMC released it's set of 35 new colours in 2017. DMC don't add new colours very often at all so when these 35 new shades of mostly greys, purples and greens came out, there was a huge cry of joy as they filled some missing holes in peoples' collections.


Unfortunately, DMC haven't always just added colours, but they've removed and replaced colours. And patterns -especially old patterns that haven't been updated to reflect current stock- can still require these colours to complete. I wanted to help with this handy list of replacement, currently-available table of colours.

Discontinued DMC flosses.

Old floss Replace with
504 3813
731 732
776 3326
781 782
806 3760
868 801
971 740
3773 407

There are also some DMC flosses that you can only purchase within a pack, and cannot easily obtain just a single colour on its own. In my opinion, it isn't feasable to keep buying a pack of 8 when you just need more of 1 specific colour, so here's a list of replacement DMC flosses to use instead of what the pattern you're creating calls for, if it's any of these numbers.

A haphazard bundle of DMC flosses

Hard-to-obtain DMC flosses.

Original floss Replace with
3880 223
3881 164
3882 839
3883 722
3884 535
3885 312
3886 3685
3887 208
3888 3740
3889 445
3890 3766
3891 995
3892 740
3893 543
3894 907
3895 646

I hope this has been helpful! I have collated this information from other sources and honestly, I'll be glad to have this reference for myself, even if no one else finds it useful. Hah!

As an aside; the colours I've represented the replacements as are only an estimation, since dyed cotton and HEX codes (the colours your computer monitor use to display each colour you see) cannot be completely and exactly replicated. They're just there to assist.

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Kate 👋

About the author

In a previous life (AKA: pre-kids), I was a web des/dev & photographer who loved to dabble in numerous arts and crafts. Now, I'm a cross-stitch & embroidery pattern designer and full-time mum to Charlie & Alex, with adult-diagnosed ADHD. Closet nerd, self-proclaimed hermit and professional procrastinator. I have a secret crush on modern architecture, brush calligraphy, sweets, pretty nails and pastel colours.