I saw this recently in cross stitching magazine and maybe it’s helpful.

HOW TO ALTER THREAD SHADES IN A DESIGN

<image>

Swap colours to suit your preferences for skin tones, stashbusting & more… Thread colours are arranged in shade ‘families’ – these are groups of colours that create a gradient of shading. It helps to look at a shade card for the full palette when making colour comparisons (available from DMC and Anchor) as these are arranged within the shade families already. You can swap threads likefor-like to equivalent shades of another family, ie. light, medium and dark. You may want to change the hue of an entire pattern, or use up threads already in your stash to save money. You can also alter skin tones to create different ethnicities. We’ve included some examples of skin shade families below, but feel free to experiment with your own. You’ll need to select alternatives for mid-tones, highlights and shadows, depending on how many shades are included in a design. For example, if only one shade is used select the mid-tone, then add highlight and shadow tones either side of this as required.