Choosing the Right Color for Your Project

Hi there, I'm Corrina Ferguson for the Knitting Circle. In this video we're gonna learn about how to pick the right color for your project. So let's get started. So let's talk about choosing the right colors for your project. There are a lots of things that we wanna keep in mind when we're choosing colors for our projects. Does this color look good on me? Does this color make me look like I need to go to the hospital? Does this color look good on the person I'm going to give it to as a present? Does the color for this pillow match my couch? Do I want to give this color as a gift? All kinds of things to think about, you know, whether or not the child's gonna want the color, to wear the color. You know, maybe the child only wears purple and pink. You never know. So lots of reasons to choose colors, but when it comes to choosing colors for multicolor or more than one color projects there's some things to keep in mind. So I have three projects in front of me that have different levels of contrast and how we chose the yarns and the colors. One of the things that comes into play when you're choosing colors is, do they have it in stock at my yarn store or craft store? That has made me make some, shall we say unusual yarn choices. But here, kind of move this nonsense out of the way. this is the nepeta hat. It is knit in two colors of bulky wool yarn, and it is a dark purple and a light purple. And they contrast really well. They're kind of bright colors, but it's also kind of one of those kind of colors that, easy to wear with jeans. Isn't like screaming yellow anchors colors, but there's enough contrast between the light and the dark so that you can see the patterning in this. And that's one of the things that you wanna keep in mind if you're doing anything with more than one color, because there's a reason that there's more than one color. Is the color going to be dark enough or light enough to contrast? And this is a good example of being dark enough and light enough to contrast. Same thing with the Laleska show here. We have this orange and this cream, this is a sport weight silk wool blend, and you've got the cream and the orange, very good contrast. When you have this Latvian braid feature here the braid looks beautiful, the strands are very distinct from one another. So these actually make a little more contrast than the purples, because you're going from the cream to that almost orange sherbert kind of color there. So that's a good way to think about that. When you're looking at a pattern that has been designed and the designer has chosen their colors they've chosen the colors for a reason. Obviously they think that those colors look lovely together, or the yarn company that they did it for, let's use this color and this color. But also it gives you an idea, how different are the colors. The white and the orange, there's a good amount of difference, but it's not like white and black. I mean, it's not going crazy with the contrast. Oh, this would look really cool, and white and black now that I think about it. But you just kinda have to think about the effects that you're going for. This has lays and some, a little bit of delicateness to it. So a much starker contrast might not be the way that you wanna go. When we're looking at the Cadmus Cowl there's actually very little contrast between the three colors and you may not see it right away when you're looking at it. The three colors that are used in this. It starts with, and I always call it vanilla orange dreamsicle and strawberry, because just feels like an ice cream shell to me or ice cream Colette, it's actually a Collette. But the colors fade nicely from one to the other. So these were chosen, what you keep in mind, and you can see kind of in the stitching here, how we move from the creamy almond color into this orangish color. And we have rows where we're doing different colors, but they blend nicely. There's no like stark line. It's kind of like hair color blending. And then down here again, when we go from the orange to the pink we do it over a matter of rows, things blend in nicely, and then at the bottom you're in all pink. And when you look at the tassel on the hardness you can see how, from a distance you might not even know there's three colors in the tassel, but when you look at that close-up you can see. One of the things that you wanna keep in mind was something like this Cadmus Calette is what color is gonna be closer to your face. For example, this has this almond and vanilla color here, and then it ends with the pink color. Obviously you wouldn't want to go straight from the vanilla to the strawberry, but maybe you or the person that you're knitting this for is gonna look way better with all the strawberry up near their face. So that's another thing to keep in mind when you're choosing colors. And then the last example I wanna show you is my carnival curl. And this is knit and stripes, it's two different yarns. Everything else that I've showed you over here has been the same exact yarn. It's all the same yarn, same brand, it just happens to be different colors in those brands. This is actually two different brands, and the wool silk blend, and then we have a silk mohair blend, and you'll notice, I'm gonna show you this portion here. This has that magenta plum color. And then it almost matches the magenta plum color that's in this very fuzzy yarn. And that's why I picked them to go together. Normally you might not say, oh, lime green and plum. You could disagree with me. I'm the designer though. So I said, oh, I really like the way these bright, and the reason it's called carnival is because it kind of reminds me of Mardi Gras a little bit. I liked the way these bright colors went together, and I felt like because we had the plum magenta color here, and the plum magenta color there. It went very nicely together. And when you come to picking colors in different yarn families or different yarn brands, it's a little bit more complicated because you're not looking at like the same kind of fabric and everything, but a lot of times that can work out very nicely because with this fuzzy yarn here, it almost kind of softens how bright that plum magenta color is. So that's another thing to keep in mind, is that you can make crazy color combinations. You can just kind of look and say, oh, this goes with this because, and you can make up any reason you think they go together because it's your knitting. The bottom line I think when it comes to picking colors is obviously you want to pick something that suits you, but the most important thing pick something that makes you happy. Thank you so much for joining me to learn about picking colors for your projects. Check out our website for more great videos.