Planning a needlepoint project? Enter your design size or stitch counts and this calculator estimates how many skeins of DMC Pearl Cotton size 5 (standard 25 m / 27 yd skeins) you need on 18-mesh canvas, color by color.
How much thread do I need for needlepoint?
A common rule of thumb is that 1.5 yards of Pearl Cotton 5 covers 1 square inch of 18-mesh canvas in basketweave or continental stitch. One square inch of 18-mesh holds 18 × 18 = 324 stitches, and a standard 25 m skein of DMC Pearl Cotton 5 is about 27 yards, so one skein covers roughly 18 square inches, or about 5,800 stitches.
DMC also sells some Pearl 5 colors in a larger 45 m (about 49 yd) skein. It covers about 1.8 times as much, so if that's the size you're buying, you'll need roughly half as many skeins as the calculator shows.
The calculator adds a 10% buffer for thread tails and starting and ending, then rounds up to whole skeins. For example, a 4 × 4 inch design stitched in one color is 16 square inches, or 24 yards. With the buffer that's about 26.4 yards, so one skein.
Tips for buying thread
- Round up on backgrounds. Large areas of one color are where people run short, so if an estimate lands close to a full skein, buy one extra.
- Your stitch matters. Basketweave and continental use about the same amount of thread. Half-cross uses less but covers the canvas less fully.
- Tension varies. Stitching tightly or ripping out sections uses more thread than the estimate.
- Only Pearl colors are listed. Pearl Cotton comes in fewer colors than floss. Browse every shade on our DMC Thread Color Chart.
Prefer not to count? Many of our canvases come as kits with every DMC thread included. Shop needlepoint canvases →