Ever load a design into your embroidery machine or software, only to discover that the colors look all funky? Thought so.

That's not a mistake, it's just the nature of the beast -- different embroidery formats have vastly different sized color palettes that they can understand, and we use a huge palette of colors, so things are pretty much guaranteed to look strange.

That's why we provide a color change sheet (aka thread list) for each design on the site, for you to follow if you want your stitchout to look like ours (and if you don't, that's completely cool by us).

Embroidery program Embird, however, has a nifty little trick to import color information (in version 2003 and newer), so the design on your computer will look just like how we stitched it out. Save the embroidery design to your computer, save the color information in a specially formatted text file in the same folder, and voila ... no more wacky colors!

Here's how to import a design's color information into Embird, step by step:

Go to the thread list for the design or pack you've ordered. Click the "txt file" link for a design to download its thread list as a text file.

Save the text file in the same folder as the embroidery design. Make sure to save the file with the same name as the design.

(For example, if you're using .PES format embroidery designs, the filenames should be UT3148.PES and UT3148.TXT. Or clownbunny.PES and clownbunny.TXT, if you prefer. As long as they match, it's all good.)

Open up Embird. In the Manager mode, click on Options and make sure that "Support Palette Files" is checked. Navigate to the folder where the embroidery design and the text file are saved. Open the embroidery design.

Remember, the embroidery design and the text file need to be in the same folder, with the same filename but different extensions, in order for this trick to work.

Ta da ... the colors on your computer now match the design as we stitched it!