How Do I Get Great Colors? By Cheating Of Course!

Take advantage of our 10% off cone yarn sale!

Does your brain go into a panic when you have to choose colors? If you’ve ever been stumped on how to work with color, you’ve come to the right place! We at Cotton Clouds make working with color easy!

Throw away your color wheel; forget about hue, value, staturation! I never think of those words when working with color!

How do I do it? Well, I cheat of course! This Cheating on Color blog will show you some quick and easy ways to put fabulous yarn color combinations together for real sucess that you’ll love. Here are three ways to Cheat on Color that have been working for me not only in my own personal weavings, but in the 33 years I’ve been putting knitting, weaving & crochet yarn kits together at Cotton Clouds.

1. CHOOSE A VARIEGATED YARN: Manufacturers have good color sense in combining colors that work well together. Take advantage of that by choosing a variegated yarn and matching two or three solid colors to balance the concentration of colors in the variegated. While you don’t have to choose the same yarn line for the solids as the variegated, it will be easier to match colors. This is how I’ve chosen the colors for our popular Bambu Variegated Scarf kit with one Bambu 7 Variegated yarn and two Bambu 7 Solid yarn colors. It works!

2. SWIPE A PHOTO (From Home Decor): Keep a camera handy and take photos whenever and wherever you are inspired. While on vacation in Florida, I was unexpectedly inspired by couch fabric at a friend’s home. So I whipped out my camera and now have a yarn wrap for a future weaving. Wouldn’t this make a great scarf or throw!

I love this couch fabric!

So I tried to find the closest colors in Bambu 7 Mini Cones to match the fabric and wound a random stripe just to give me an idea. What do you think?

3.SWIPE A PHOTO (From Nature): Nature always inspires me, but it’s not always sunsets. Subtle or bold colors of flowers, sea shells, leaves or sea pods can give you all the color inspiration you need to first make a color wrap, and then transform it to a weaving, knitting or crochet project.

I fell in love with the unusual color combination in this hothouse orchid. Since my grand-niece needed a baby blanket, I decided to design her an unusual blanket with these colors.

I wouldn’t have ever thought to choose these colors just from the Aurora Earth Color Card.

I used five colors of our new Aurora Earth Mini Cones (4 oz for $6.50 each) to do my sampling. Aurora Earth is now also available on great for sampling 2 oz Mini Cones for $4.00 each.

Aurora Earth 8/2 unmercerized cotton in Maize #32, Gold #33, Yellow #31, Magenta #30 & Rose #27.

I enjoyed doing the wrap and visualizing how I would warp and weave this baby blanket. Warp stripe, plaid, twill or tabby? The image of the orchid inspired me to add only accents of the vibrant magenta and rose. The Gold #33 was an afterthought and I like the boldness of it. What do you think?

So get rid of those color blues (no pun intended) and get inspired by your world around you. There are color combinations out there that work. Just do a little cheating on color and you’ll find great success and satisfaction in all your fiberarts projects.

The Aurora Earth 8/2 Color Card with over 60 sublte shades of color (shown above) has enough actual dyed yarn to unwind from the card to do your own color wraps. Or play with color with Aurora Earth’s new 4 oz Mini Cones or 2 oz Mini Cones. We’ve made them very affordable! Take advantage of our 10% off cone yarn sale and Free Shipping Kit Sale!