How to choose your colors

How to pick the perfect color palette for a project is always a concern of my students. The first thing to take into account is of course the project I have to tackle and what I have in mind for it. Embroidery allows us to be creative and in art your imagination is the limit so when I say “what you have in mind for it” what I mean is that maybe you want to embroider a jungle buy you want it to be blue, go for it! There is nothing carve in stone for this, it is your choice entirely, have fun! It is really helpful to start with a Moodboard but is not always crucial to have one, you can start simple.

What I consider a must is to choose your colors in the daylight, we perceive colors differently under artificial light so in this case daylight is your best friend. Then, try to pick all your color palette for the whole project at the same time and once you are perfectly happy stick to it, unless you discover in the road it makes you absolutely miserable of course, in that case and only then you should reconsider some colors or the whole palette for that matter. Also keep in mind that not only light makes us perceive colors differently but also how we feel, so if you are having a bad day it may be better to take your time before changing the initially chosen palette that once made you so happy =)

In the years of experience I have I have used different resources to help me with choosing a color palette. The first one I discover is the large amount of color boards you can find on Pinterest, you can find my color board with more than 300 pins for you to be inspired to create your own.

There is a book I think is especially helpful to understand color theory, though I would not get caught up with theory and will trust my eyes instead; never-less is a good book to have at hand, it is called Colour Confident Stitching by Karen Barbé.

Another great resource is the app by Pantone Studio, it is specially useful when you want to extract the color palette from an image, just download it and play around with it to discover all the possibilities.

Embroidery thread brands designate a number for each color, so you might want to always safe this data for further projects or in case you run out of thread before finishing your project. There are also conversion charts to go from one brand to another and be able to find almost the exact color (they will never be exactly the same); take this into account if you can’t find the color you want in a particular brand, justo look online for the correct chart.

I think that is all I got for color today, do you think there is something to add? Have any doubts or questions? Every comment is welcome and answered! Have a good one! XOXO