The history of Embroidery, indeed any kind of embellishment upon garments is centuries old. This is not about that..but recreating the styles and techniques of Embroidery from the middle ages to the renaissance. Designs we can come up with, but what about the colors? Do we use Wool, or silk? I don’t know about you, but when I price skeins of Wool Embroidery yarn I cringe, silk is only a bit more expensive, and that leaves us with Cotton Floss. We know that cotton embroidery floss is well into the more modern age when it comes to materials for embroidery, but it’s so much less expensive than wools and silks. I got bored one day and thought about the colors available back then, and while not so abundant as our modern color palette, they still had quite a selection. Digging through my seeming abundance of colors, some mine and some I inherited from my mum I looked for pictures of the colors and found one reference. Pinterest, blessed Pinterest! for the Tudor Era Colors I found a lovely chart, created ( July 4, 2012 by staceywng. http://www.creamcityillustrators.com/2012/07/another-fun-renaissance-thing/), but their link has expired and luckily I found another: https://elizabethantrinkets.tumblr.com/post/84951760553/courtesy-of-cream-city-illustrators, and the rest of the colors for the Medieval List come from Rosalies Medieval Woman page..Amazing Resource for those starting out or needing a reference when doing some sort of research..(Remember, This project of mine got started because I was bored) (http://rosaliegilbert.com/dyesandcolours.html). Please Understand that I am in no way going to post pictures from their pages, even if I found them on Pinterest. Because this page here is just a starting point for any who would do deeper research I fully expect you to do your own research and citations, It was only a few minutes worth of time googling the names of medieval and renaissance colors. Pinterest is also a good place to start, don’t forget your local libraries.
I am going to go alphabetically with the names starting with the Medieval List and then bring in the Tudor List. Many of the colors will have salty names, like Bloody Flux a dirty red brown and Puke a deep grey brown..but don’t be alarmed, they are not ugly colors, just differently named. In many instances the colors are simply named and it’s in the Tudor Era that the names get more creative and sometimes snarky sounding, such as Dead Spaniard (Slate grey). Where you see the same name from one era to another means usually that it is a very popular color. Please Note: These are the colors that I use which may not be correct in color or hue, but are what I can get close to color wise from the confines of my color stash. Where the names have remained the same I have kept the DMC colors the same for a bit of continuity.
| Medieval Color Name | DMC Cotton Floss Number |
| Aureole – Orange | 741 |
| Bristol Red-Red | 606 |
| Bloody Flux | 816 |
| Burnet-Brown | 400 |
| Carsey-yellow | 973 |
| Cendre/Cinder | 535 |
| Garance- madder-red | 498 |
| Goose-turd- yellow green | 772 |
| Gris-Grey | 318 |
| Grisart-Light Grey | 415 |
| Inde-Indigo Blue | 3843 |
| Maiden Hair-Bright Tan | 728 |
| Mezereon- Rose Purple | 326 |
| Milk and Water- Blue-ish White | 3761 |
| Popinjay-Blue Green | 827 |
| Puke-Dirty Grey Brown | 840 |
| Raw Flesh- Pinkish Orange | 352 |
| Russet-Dark Brown | 300 |
| Sheep Color- Natural Creamy White | Ecru |
| Tawny-Dusky Orange Brown | 722 |
| Vert- Green | 906 |
| Violet- Purple | 552 |
and now for the Tudor Color List.
| Tudor Color Name | DMC Cotton Floss Number |
| Apes Laugh | 164 |
| Beans Blue | 518 |
| Biskaye | 823 |
| Bottle Green | 334 |
| Bristol | 606 |
| Brown Bread | 3772 |
| Burnet | 400 |
| Cane Colour | 437 |
| Chimney Sweep | 317 |
| Dead Spaniard | 452 |
| Devil in the Head | 700 |
| Goose-turd | 772 |
| Loves Longing | 3687 |
| Lustie-Gallant | 351 |
| Maiden Hair | 728 |
| Maidens Blush | 899 |
| Merry Widow | 973 |
| Milk and Water | 3761 |
| Mortal Sin- True Black | 310 |
| Ox Blood | 814 |
| Pansey | 554 |
| Pheasant | 816 |
| Puke | 840 |
| Purple | 552 |
| Raw Flesh | 352 |
| Russet | 300 |
| Scarlett | 326 |
| Sea Water | 517 |
| Soppes in Wine | 355 |
| Straw | 782 |
| Tawny | 722 |
| Turkey | 898 |
| Ultra Marine | 311 |
| Watchet | 820 |
| Whey | 677 |
| Yellow | 743 |
Lady Mevanou's Musings 