Senorita Rayon · Help centre
Everything you can do with
Embroidery ThreadMatch
Photograph a piece of cloth and the app returns Senorita Rayon thread codes that work on it — with the reason for every pick. This guide covers the whole flow, screen by screen, plus the colour science underneath it.
1What the app does
ThreadMatch reads the colours out of a photograph of your fabric, then searches the Senorita Rayon catalogue for threads that sit in a deliberate relationship to those colours — matching, neighbouring, or opposite, depending on the style you pick. It runs entirely on the phone. Nothing is uploaded, and it works with the aeroplane mode on.
The three-step flow
- Photograph or upload the cloth
Crop to fabric only, correct the light if the room has a colour cast, then tap Analyse fabric.
- Say how many threads you want
Two to six. The app recommends a number based on how busy the fabric is.
- Choose a colour style
Seven colour-wheel schemes or thirteen designer palettes. Tap Match threads and the codes appear, scored and explained.
What it is not
- It is not a dye-lot tool. Thread from different lots varies; always confirm against a real spool before cutting a large order.
- It does not need an internet connection, and it never sends your photos anywhere.
- It does not stitch out a design — the preview is a simulation, not an embroidery file.
for this fabric?
Recent projects
Which edition are you using?
| Feature | Free edition | Full edition |
|---|---|---|
| Colour Library | 100 curated shades — name, swatch and hex only | All 336 shades with codes, families and shade-card positions |
| Fabric scanning | Yes | Yes |
| Thread codes in results | Not shown | Shown, with card and row |
| Catalogue corrections | — | Correct any shade; export and import |
| Embroidery preview & export | — | Yes |
| Account needed | No — open and use | Sign in once, then offline |
2First run & offline use
On first launch you will see the plum splash screen while the shade catalogue loads — it is a large file and it is read once, from the phone, not the network. After that the app opens straight onto Home.
Permissions the app asks for
Decline either one and the app keeps working — you simply lose that route in. There is no location, contacts, or background permission of any kind.
Where your data lives
- On the device only. Favourites, projects, catalogue corrections and settings are stored in the app's own storage.
- Uninstalling erases them. Export your corrections and any project you care about before you remove the app or change phones.
- Clearing app storage in Android settings has the same effect as a fresh install.
3The home screen
Home has two jobs: start a match, or take you to something you saved. Everything else in the app hangs off these six controls.
The bottom bar
Home, Favourites, Projects and Settings are always one tap away. The back arrow in the top bar walks back through the flow rather than closing the app, so you can step from results to style to count without losing the fabric you analysed.
4Photographing fabric
This is the step that decides everything after it. The app can only match the colour it is given, so a photograph taken under a warm bulb produces warm thread codes. Two minutes spent on the shot saves an hour at the machine.
Getting the shot right
- Lay the fabric flat
Folds throw shadows, and a shadow reads as a darker colour that the app will faithfully try to match.
- Work in bright shade, not direct sun
Sun blows out the sheen on rayon, satin and songket, and the reading drifts light. Overcast daylight by a window is close to ideal.
- Fill the frame with cloth
Get close enough that the fabric is most of the picture, and hold the phone parallel to the surface.
- Crop to fabric only
Drag the four gold corners. Anything left inside the box — your hand, the table, a ruler, a printed label — becomes one of the colours found.
- Tap Analyse fabric
The button stays dimmed until there is an image to work on.
Camera or upload
The segmented control at the bottom switches between the two. Both land on the same crop screen, so an old photo from the gallery gets exactly the same treatment as a fresh one — just remember that you cannot fix the light in a photo taken last year as well as you can simply retake it.
5Adjusting the photo
The adjust tray sits over the bottom of the scan screen with the photo still visible above it, so you can see every change as you make it. Everything here alters the pixels the analyser will read — this is colour correction, not a filter.
Auto white balance — use this first
Room light has a colour of its own. Tungsten bulbs push everything orange, older fluorescent tubes push it green, and shade pushes it blue. Auto white balance measures that cast and removes it, which is usually the single biggest improvement available to a photo taken indoors.
If the fabric is a strong single colour covering the whole frame, the correction has less to work with and can overshoot. Toggle it off and compare.
The four sliders
| Control | Range | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Brightness | −45 to +45 | The whole photo came out darker or lighter than the cloth looks in your hand |
| Contrast | −35 to +35 | A flat, hazy photo needs its light and dark areas separated again |
| Saturation | −40 to +40 | Colour looks washed out, or the phone has over-cooked it |
| Lift shadows | 0 to +80 | Detail in the dark folds has gone solid black |
The chips along the top
- Hold to compare — press and hold to see the untouched photo, release to return. The honest test of whether an adjustment helped.
- Rotate left / right — turns the image in 90° steps.
- Whole image — resets the crop box to the full frame.
- Reset — returns every slider to zero and switches white balance off.
- Retake / Upload — swap the photo without leaving the tray.
Tap Done to close the tray. Your adjustments stay applied.
Auto white balance removes the colour cast of the room light.
6Step 1 · Fabric preview
The first of three steps. The app has now clustered the pixels inside your crop and is showing you what it found, before it commits to any thread.
Step 1 of 3
Detected colours
Fabric type
Detected colours
Three swatches, in order of how much of the cloth they cover:
If one of these is clearly wrong — a slice of table top, say — go back and re-crop rather than working around it.
Fabric analysis
Below the swatches the app reports what it measured about the surface: how varied the lightness is, how strong the edges are, whether there are bright saturated specks (metallic thread already in the weave), and an overall contrast rating of Low, Medium or High. Open Measurements at the bottom for the raw numbers — dominant LAB and hex, and the colour metric in use.
Fabric type — check this one
The app guesses from texture, and the guess is a heuristic, not a certainty. Setting it correctly changes which palettes are ranked highly, so it is worth a glance.
- Songket pushes gold and ceremonial palettes up the ranking.
- Kerawang favours its own metallic palette, separated by lightness rather than hue — the way openwork is actually worked.
- Batik favours Earth Nature and the Nyonya Collection.
- Plain gives the wheel schemes room; Modern Premium reads well on it.
7Step 2 · How many thread colours
Pick anything from two to six. The app prints a recommendation underneath, worked out from how busy your fabric turned out to be — a quiet plain cloth can carry more threads before it looks noisy, and a loud batik usually cannot.
Choosing a number
| Threads | Reads as | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Deliberate and restrained | Monograms, edging, tone-on-tone work on plain fabric |
| 3 | The safe default | Most flower-and-leaf motifs; a ground, a highlight, a shadow |
| 4 | Rich | Bridal panels, kerawang borders. Required by Tetradic and Square |
| 5–6 | Elaborate | Large ceremonial pieces where the fabric itself is calm |
Your choice is remembered as the default for the next fabric. Change it any time in Settings → Default thread count.
Step 2 of 3
How many thread coloursdo you want to use?
Recommended for this fabric
3 – 4 colours
8Step 3 · Choose a colour style
The styles are grouped into two kinds, and they work in genuinely different ways. Wheel schemes are relative — they rotate around the hue of your own fabric, so the same scheme gives different threads on different cloth. Designer palettes are fixed — a defined set of colours that the app matches threads to, whatever the fabric.
Which kind should you pick?
- Choose a wheel scheme when the fabric is the star and the stitching should answer it — plain cloth, printed cotton, anything where you want the threads tied to the colour already there.
- Choose a designer palette when the piece has to belong to a tradition or a brief — bridal gold, Peranakan brights, kerawang metallics — regardless of what the cloth underneath happens to be.
- Not sure? Match once each way. The results screen lists other styles that scored well, so switching costs one tap.
Step 3 of 3
Colour wheel schemes
Designer palettes
Colour wheel schemes
The angle column is how far each thread sits from your fabric's hue on the wheel.
| Scheme | Shown as | Angle from fabric | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monochromatic | Tone-on-Tone | 0° — one hue, varied lightness | Quiet, expensive-looking, very forgiving |
| Analogous | Soft Harmony | Neighbours within 60° | Gentle movement without contrast |
| Complementary | High Contrast | 180° — directly opposite | Maximum pop; the motif jumps off the cloth |
| Split-Complementary | Balanced Contrast | 150° and 210° | Complementary energy, less shouting |
| Triadic | Three-Colour Balance | 120° apart | Lively and even; needs three threads |
| Tetradic (rectangle) | Four-Colour Rich | Two pairs, 60° apart | Full and complex; needs four threads |
| Square | Four-Colour Bold | 90° apart | The boldest of the four-colour schemes |
Designer palettes
Twelve fixed sets, written for the work this catalogue is actually bought for.
| Palette | What is in it |
|---|---|
| Royal Luxury | Gold, champagne, ivory, bronze, dark brown. The standard for formal Malay bridal wear. |
| Traditional Malay | Songket gold, deep maroon, royal blue and emerald — the ceremonial set for baju kurung and tenunan. |
| Nyonya Collection | Peranakan kebaya brights: turquoise, coral, jade, canary and lilac. High-key and unafraid to clash. |
| Luxury Kerawang | Metallics only, separated by lightness rather than hue — how openwork kerawang is really worked. |
| Romantic | Blush, rose gold, ivory, champagne. Bridal without going full gold. |
| Modern Premium | White, silver, grey, black. Minimal and architectural; very good on plain fabric. |
| Earth Nature | Olive, moss, brown, coffee, cream. Reads as handmade rather than manufactured. |
| Floral Inspired | Orchid, lavender, pink, mint, leaf green. Built for flower motifs with leaves. |
| Jewel Collection | Emerald, ruby, sapphire, amethyst, topaz. Deep and saturated; needs a calm fabric. |
| Elegant Wedding | For busana pengantin: gold, antique gold, champagne, ivory, pearl. |
| Bold Fashion | Red, black, gold, royal blue, purple. Loud on purpose. |
| Vintage | Dusty and muted: old rose, taupe, olive, faded teal. Nothing shouts. |
Tap Match threads when you have chosen. Your pick becomes the default style for the next fabric; change it in Settings → Default colour style.
9Reading the results
Every thread on this screen comes with the reason it was chosen, because a code on its own tells you nothing about whether it will work on your cloth.
Royal Luxury
Your colour combinationThe match score
The ring at the top is a percentage for the set as a whole, not for any single thread. It rewards threads that sit close to where the scheme says they should, and penalises a set whose members are too similar to each other to read as separate colours in stitching.
- 80 and above — the scheme is well served by the catalogue for this fabric.
- 60 to 79 — usable; check the individual ΔE values before committing.
- Below 60 — the catalogue cannot serve this scheme on this fabric well. Try a different style rather than accepting it.
Each thread row
A row carries the code, the shade name, the role it plays in the scheme — Dominant match, Complement, Highlight, Shadow — and its ΔE from the ideal colour for that slot. Tap a row to open the full colour detail.
Lock and reshuffle
Tap the padlock on a thread you want to keep. Then tap Reshuffle, bottom right: only the unlocked slots are drawn again. This is how you keep the gold you liked and cycle through options for everything around it.
The rest of the screen
The five actions
10Colour detail & understanding ΔE
Tapping any thread — in results, in the catalogue, or in a saved project — opens its detail screen: a large swatch, the measured values, three suitability scores, and two buttons.
What the detail screen shows
Find similar colours opens the alternatives list. Correct this colour jumps to the catalogue editor for that shade.
ΔE — the one number worth learning
ΔE is the perceived distance between two colours. It is not a percentage and it has no upper limit; it is closer to "how far apart these look to a human eye". The app uses CIEDE2000, which is tuned to human vision rather than to arithmetic convenience.
Scores
| ΔE | How it looks on cloth | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Under 2 | Invisible. You could not pick them apart side by side. | A true match |
| 2 – 5 | A close match. Visible only if you hold them together and look for it. | A safe substitute |
| 5 – 10 | Noticeably different, clearly the same colour family. | Acceptable when nothing closer exists |
| 10 – 25 | Reads as a related shade — a lighter or deeper version. | Deliberate tonal work |
| Over 40 | A different colour entirely. | Strong contrast, on purpose |
Matching accepts threads up to ΔE 8. That ceiling was chosen by testing: tightened to 5, roughly three in a hundred real fabrics come back with no matches at all, which is worse than a slightly loose match you can see and judge for yourself.
Similar colours
The alternatives screen shows the current thread at the top and the nearest shades below it, each with its ΔE. Use it when the recommended code is out of stock, when you already have something close in the drawer, or when you want the same colour a shade deeper.
11Compare
Compare puts the threads against your actual fabric photo, which catches the thing a swatch grid hides: a colour that looks fine in isolation and disappears completely on the cloth it has to sit on.
12Embroidery preview
A simulation of how the chosen threads look stitched, drawn using the sheen and shadow measured from your own fabric photo. It is for judging colour, not for judging stitch quality — and it is not an embroidery file.
Motif
Stitch
The two view modes
- Preview on fabric — the motif drawn over your photographed cloth. The honest test of whether the combination works.
- Stitch view — the motif on a neutral ground, for judging the threads against each other without the fabric interfering.
Motifs and stitches
| Motif | Shape | Stitch | Look |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bunga | Flower with petals and centre | Satin | Long parallel stitches with a strong sheen |
| Daun | Leaf with a vein | Fill | Solid, matte, heavier coverage |
| Kerawang | Openwork border | Outline | Line work only — the shape without the mass |
| Geometri | Repeating geometric block | — | |
Background and density
The background row swaps the ground colour between seven neutrals, from white through to near-black, plus your own fabric. Use it when the photograph is too busy to read the threads honestly — a combination that survives on white and on charcoal will survive anywhere.
Stitch density runs from 3 to 14. Low values show the ground through the stitches, the way light satin work behaves on open weave; high values pack them tight, closer to a dense machine fill.
Save preview writes a PNG to your phone.
13Catalogue & corrections
All 336 Senorita Rayon shades, browsable and searchable, and — this is the part worth knowing about — correctable. Every correction you make improves every match the app produces afterwards.
Finding a shade
716) or a colour
name in English or Malay (ivory, emas).The grid loads a page at a time; Show more shades appears at the bottom when the filtered list runs longer than one page.
Variegated threads
66 of the 336 shades are variegated — rainbow windings that change colour along their length. A single colour cannot describe them, so they are excluded from normal matching by default and carry a four-colour palette instead. Turn on Match variegated threads in the catalogue to include them.
Correcting a shade against a real spool
- Hold the spool against the screen
Same light, same angle, next to the on-screen swatch.
- Tap the shade, then Correct this colour
Available from the catalogue and from any thread's detail screen.
- Nudge the value until they agree
Compare the before and after swatches shown side by side.
- Save
Your value overrides the shipped one from then on, for matching, results and preview.
14Colour Library (free edition)
The free edition has a browse tab rather than the full catalogue: 100 curated shades shown with their name, swatch and hex value. Thread codes, shade-card positions and the correction editor belong to the full edition.
The free edition needs no account and no sign-in. Open it and use it.
15Favourites & Projects
Two different kinds of saving, and the distinction matters when you come back to something six weeks later.
| Favourites | Projects | |
|---|---|---|
| Holds | A thread combination | A whole job — fabric, settings and threads together |
| Saved from | The Save button on results | The + button on the Projects tab |
| Find it again by | Search, or the All / Recent / Starred filters | Search by project name |
| Use it for | Combinations you want to reuse on other cloth | Named work you will return to and finish |
Star a favourite to keep it at the top of the Starred filter. Opening either one restores the full result screen, so Compare, Preview and Export all still work on it.
16Export & sharing
Export on the results screen offers three routes out of the app. All three build the same sheet: your fabric swatch, every thread with its code and name, the style used, the match score and the date.
The embroidery preview has its own Save preview button, which writes just the simulated motif as a PNG.
17Settings
Preferences
App
Data
Preferences
App
- Dark theme — ivory linen by day, plum by night.
- Reduce motion — turns off transitions and animations throughout.
Data
- Export — writes your catalogue corrections to a JSON file.
- Import — reads that file back on this or another phone.
- Reset catalogue — discards every correction. Permanent.
The panel above these buttons shows how much space your saved data is using.
Also on this screen
A built-in User guide and an About the colour data panel, plus the app version. This help centre is the longer version of both.
18Membership & account
The full edition is a membership. You sign in once through the gateway screen; after that the app carries a signed entitlement on the device and works offline for the life of your membership.
Signing in
- Open the app and sign in on the gateway screen
Use the email address your membership was bought with. If you were given an invitation code, enter it when asked.
- The app stores your entitlement
From here on it does not need a connection. It records when your membership runs to, and how often it should re-check.
- Go back online occasionally
A brief connection now and then lets the app confirm your membership is still current. You do not need to do anything — just open it with a signal from time to time.
Your account
If the app says your membership has ended
You will see a plain screen offering Renew membership and Check membership. Your saved projects are untouched and will be waiting. Renew, then tap Check membership with a connection to bring the app back immediately rather than waiting for its next scheduled check.
19How the colour data works
Worth reading once, because it tells you exactly how far to trust a match — and where the app is honest about its own limits.
Every shade is physically measured
All 336 shades have been read with a CR30 spectrocolorimeter directly off the thread, not sampled from a photograph. The instrument is set to a D65 daylight illuminant with the 2° standard observer, M0 measurement mode, averaged readings, and CIEDE2000 as the difference formula.
| Stage | Where the numbers came from | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Photographic | Sampled from white-balanced photographs of the shade cards | Superseded — kept in each entry for audit |
| Formula-corrected | A per-channel correction fitted against instrument readings | Superseded — kept for audit |
| Physically measured | CR30 readings of the actual thread | In use — all 336 shades |
Why photographs were not good enough
Photograph-derived colour carries a bias that is consistent enough to be measured: pastels read too light, dark shades read too dark, and everything runs slightly cool against the real thread. Knowing the direction of the error is not the same as removing it, which is why every shade was eventually put under the instrument.
How matching works
- Colours are compared in CIELAB, a space built so that equal numerical distances look like roughly equal differences to the eye.
- Distance is measured with CIEDE2000, which corrects LAB's remaining weaknesses, particularly in blues and near-neutrals.
- A thread is accepted as a match at ΔE 8 or below. Tighter than that and real fabrics start returning nothing at all.
- The 66 variegated shades are held out of ordinary matching, because no single colour describes them.
20Troubleshooting
The app closes by itself
Almost always a graphics problem on an older or lower-memory phone rather than a crash in the app. Open Settings → Visual effects and choose Lite. That removes the blurred bars and the looping animations, which are the two things a stretched graphics driver gives up on. Turning on Reduce motion as well costs nothing.
Matching feels slow
Set Colour metric to CIE76. It is around six times faster, at some cost in accuracy — mostly in blues and near-neutrals. Set Visual effects to Lite as well.
The colours look wrong
- Re-shoot in better light. Bright shade, no direct sun, cloth flat.
- Turn on Auto white balance in the adjust tray if you shot indoors.
- Re-crop. If a hand, a table edge or a label is inside the box, it is one of the colours the app found.
- Check your screen. Night-shift and adaptive-brightness modes warm the display; you will judge every swatch through that.
- Correct the shade. If a specific code disagrees with the spool in your hand, correct it in the catalogue — the fix is permanent and improves every later match.
No matches, or very few
Usually a fabric colour sitting where the range is thin, combined with a demanding scheme. Try a different colour style, raise the thread count, or turn on Match variegated threads in the catalogue to bring 66 more shades into play.
The camera will not open
Android has denied the permission. Long-press the app icon → App info → Permissions → Camera → Allow. Meanwhile, Upload works without it.
Crop handles are hard to grab
Drag from just inside the corner rather than on the very edge, and turn the phone to portrait for fine work — there is more room around the image.
Import did nothing
Import expects the JSON file produced by Export in this app. A screenshot, a PDF, or a file edited by hand will be rejected. Export a fresh file from the source phone and transfer it without opening it in anything else.
My favourites disappeared
Saved data lives in the app's own storage. Clearing app storage, uninstalling, or resetting the phone removes it, and it cannot be recovered — there is no copy on a server, by design. Export anything important.
21Questions
Does the app work without internet?
Yes. Scanning, matching, the catalogue, preview and export all run on the phone. Photos are never uploaded. The full edition needs a connection only for the initial sign-in and for the occasional membership check.
How accurate are the thread colours?
Every one of the 336 shades has been measured with a CR30 spectrocolorimeter off the physical thread, under D65 daylight with the 2° observer. That is as close as you get without the mill's own data.
Two things still stand between that number and your eye: dye lots vary between production runs, and your screen is not a calibrated viewing booth. Confirm against a real spool before a large order.
Can I use it with a thread brand that is not Senorita?
Not directly — the catalogue is Senorita Rayon. You can still use the app to work out which colours a fabric wants, then find the nearest equivalents in your own brand's chart by hex or by eye.
Why are variegated threads excluded by default?
Because matching compares one colour to one colour, and a rainbow winding is not one colour. Including them would produce confident matches against a shade that only exists on part of the spool. Turn them on in the catalogue when you want them; each carries a four-colour palette instead of a single value.
What does the match score actually measure?
How well the set as a whole delivers the scheme you asked for. It rewards threads landing near their intended position on the wheel, and penalises sets whose members are too close together to read as separate colours once stitched.
Can I move my corrections and projects to a new phone?
Catalogue corrections, yes — Settings → Data → Export, then Import on the new phone. Favourites and projects stay on the device they were made on; export the ones that matter as images or PDFs before you switch.
Is the embroidery preview an embroidery file?
No. It is a colour simulation, drawn using the sheen and shadow measured from your fabric photo. It will not drive a machine, and it is not a substitute for digitising.
Why did the same fabric give me different results?
Check three things: the crop, the fabric type, and the colour style. Wheel schemes rotate around your fabric's own hue, so a crop that shifted the dominant colour shifts everything downstream. Designer palettes are fixed and will move far less between attempts.
What is the difference between Favourites and Projects?
A favourite is a thread combination. A project is a whole job — the fabric, the settings and the threads kept together under a name you chose.
Does the free edition become the full edition if I subscribe?
No — they are separate apps with separate storage. Install the full edition and sign in; anything saved in the free edition stays in the free edition.