color combo // little miss sunshine

I LOVE playing with color, and it's most exciting to me when I get to play with color in the form of skeins of embroidery floss. From time to time I put together palettes of floss colors to share, and my latest is based on the colors in a fabric line called Little Miss Sunshine.

This charm pack of fabric called to me with its cheery colors, sweet florals, and some stripes. Oh, and there are a few fabrics with hexagons. I love hexagons.




Not every fabric line makes a good embroidery color combination, but this one was just right. Seven main colors (you could add white in there too), and they work well all together (I think they'd look great on this pattern) or in smaller groupings. Here are a few of those based on specific fabrics from this pack...





Aren't these beautiful fabrics? You can see why I had to pull colors to go with them!

I hope that this palette is helpful to you, and if you're a fabric hoarder collector like me, you may even want to see about adding some of this Moda fabric to your stash!



Do you enjoy choosing colors? What's your favorite source of color inspiration?

color combos // rainbow floss palettes

I always take delight in choosing embroidery floss colors and putting them together in pleasing combinations. Usually I don't have a plan for actually stitching with them, but I love the process of seeing what works well as a group. You can find many that I've put together here.

After I select the colors I like, the next best thing is putting them in color order. A rainbow of embroidery floss is just so pleasing! Rainbow embroidery is so enjoyable to me that I recently shared a list of rainbow stitching projects.

So I thought that with St. Patrick's Day coming up and with that pot of gold waiting at the end of the rainbow, perhaps we could do with a collection of rainbow color combos. Each one has a different feeling, but they are all based on a ROY G. BIV rainbow.

I also like to give my color combos fun names, so bear with me as I get a little cheesy...



Tweaked Tradition // This one takes a traditional rainbow and gives it a twist. It's what I would use for stitching the rainbow leading to the pot of gold in these St. Patrick's Day patterns.



Practically Pastel // Not all rainbows have to be bold, right? This one is a much lighter tint of ROY G. BIV, and it's pastel pretty.



Nearly Neon // You can buy true neon embroidery floss, but the texture isn't one I like. These rainbow colors are close to neon but in standard cotton thread. And you don't even have to plug them in!



Mildy Muted // If you want something a little more subdued, this is the color combo for you.



Light & Bright // This one may be my favorite. It's just so fresh and fun! It would also pair well with the Nearly Neon or Tweaked Tradition combos for a wider range of colors.

If you go to stitch with any of these and need a few more colors to fill out what you're stitching, look for shades that are a couple numbers up or down from what's here.

And these are from the complete DMC collection, so you may not be able to find all of the colors at your local floss supplier (Wal-Mart, for example, has a limited range). But even if you can't find all of them, these should help you find inspiration to create your own rainbows of embroidery floss!

color combo // fresh cut

This fabric. I saw it and was head over heels. It was one of those fabric lines where I said, if I ever find a deal on that, I WILL buy it. So when it was up as one of Missouri Star Quilt Company's Daily Deals a few weeks back, I snatched up a charm pack.

Fresh Cut is a recent line from Moda, and the colors are so fresh...and...colorful. Okay, so I'm not feeling the words today. But the fabrics have a slightly vintage feeling to them, and I can't wait to make something with these prints. I'm considering a quilt of some kind.

But since the colors are so, ahem, fresh and colorful, I thought they would make a nice DMC floss palette. Take a look...





There are actually more colors in this fabric line than I selected. Some are variations on these colors, and some are more like neutrals (navy, gray, etc.). I went with the ones that I really loved.

So you can see more of why I love this fabric line, and because once I start taking pictures of fabric and floss, it's hard to stop, here are a few more beauty shots!






That last one is a color that doesn't really fit for me. At least, not with the dominant colors that you see in the rest of the line. And yet, when you take it all as a whole, it completely works. I love fabric lines for this very reason. So often there are things that you might not match up on your own, but they really are perfect together!



And finally, some neutral. Here you really see the colors pop, and I think that stitching something with these floss hues on a gray would really be stunning.

I hope these colors inspire some freshly cut stitching!

stitch love // dmc floss colors

Nineteen. That's the number of colors I used for stitching the embroidery section of my book Stitch Love: Sweet Creatures Big & Small. For a while, I practically had the list memorized, as I kept running out and needed to buy more. As I kept stitching and stitching, and never ever using purple. Strange how that happened...it wasn't planned!

But to learn how I did choose this palette of colors (including a list of the DMC numbers) AND to enter to win a copy of Stitch Love, along with a fabric and floss bundle, head over to DMC Threads. The giveaway ends on Friday, February 6, so hurry!

The list of floss colors for Stitch Love will remain, so you can pick up those skeins and start stitching!

color combo // seaworthy

Let's talk happy mail for a moment. Happy mail is what I'm waiting for right now. You see, I got the shipping confirmation for a little charm pack of fabric along with a notions kit that contains the cutest scissors ever. I promise I'll show it to you when it comes. Which is supposed to be later today.

But REALLY happy mail is when you receive a package that is supposed to be one thing, but it also contains the most amazing gift of a fat quarter fabric bundle. After I made a few projects using Dear Stella's Wild fabric, they gifted me with this stack of Seaworthy. And by the way, they didn't ask me to share this with you today, but I couldn't help it because it's so pretty! So a big thank you to Dear Stella, and now for one of my favorite ways to play with fabric!

The colors in this fabric line are so classic, but they also are a little unusual together, because you don't think of combining some of these. And in fact, in the individual fabrics, they aren't all combined...but check them out as a group:



We've got red and pink, kelly and sea foam, and some classic blues and khaki. And yet, they work. So, this is the big palette, and when you break it down into smaller groupings, they look like this:



In a month filled with turtles, I think these are perfect. The pink, green, and blues are a nice combination.




Some very nautical and patriotic colors here. And is it just me, or does it feel different when the khaki is added in to the mix?



How can you not fall in love with these mermaids? I left the orange from their hair out of the overall group, and nearly left the sea foam out too, as this is the only place in the collection that this color appears. But I like it even outside of this smaller selection, as you'll see at the end.



For your very girly/preppy pirates, this combo works!



And just so you get to see the rest of the fabrics, and a few more mini palettes, check this one out. See how well the sea foam works with the red and navy?

Now I'm ready to start dreaming up something fun from this fabric...and floss!

color combo // here kitty kitty

You know how much I love embroidery floss and playing with colors, and how I've enjoyed bringing fabric into the mix. Today I invited Alyssa Thomas of Penguin & Fish to create an embroidery floss color combo of her own to share with you! Her new fabric line is perfect for May, which I've made unofficial cat month here on Wild Olive!



It has been gray and rainy here in my home of Minneapolis this week. I heard on the radio today that we haven’t seen the sun since last Saturday. It feels longer… Blech.

But there is something that is brightening up my days a bit at Penguin & Fish - our new organic fabric line, Here Kitty Kitty, just started shipping. Yay! It’s a collection full of crafty cat cuteness - cats, and yarn, and quilts, oh my!






When Mollie asked if I could create a guest floss palette, I knew the Here Kitty Kitty palette was the way to go. The collection is a fun mix of soft pinks, marigolds, yellows, aquas, and grays. The colors are cheerful and sweet, and the floss that I picked to coordinate with the collection is bringing some nice color into these gray Spring days.





I used the colors to stitch up my two new embroidery patterns, Crafty Cat and Knitty Kitty. The patterns were also used as part of our “No Instructions” Embroidery Experiment, which you can read about here on the Penguin & Fish blog here. The patterns are available now at penguinandfish.com, and the matching Kitty Blankey and Here Kitty Kitty fabric bundles will be available soon.

Thanks Mollie for letting me share!

And thank you, Alyssa, for putting together such pretty colors and darling fabric! To see more examples of Alyssa's super sweet new embroidery patterns, be sure to check out the Here Kitty Kitty pattern experiment!

color combo // unforgettable

The floss color palette that I've put together to share with you today is unforgettable. No really, it's called Unforgettable, because I chose the colors based on the Riley Blake fabric line of the same name.

I love playing with colors and seeing how they look and work together, and recently I've been using fabric as the inspiration. If you are ever looking for help in selecting colors for a project, looking to designer fabric lines is a perfect place to start.





Often when I pull out shades of floss to match fabrics, I don't use all of the colors in the design. Instead I go with what I like and what I think would be fun and useful together. In this case, I dropped the brown and tan that are in some of the patterns, but I did keep the gray. Swapping in the brown and tan would change the mood of these colors quite a bit, I think!




Seeing the colors as a group and then seeing them in smaller groupings is always interesting to me. They have different feeling in these collections. Of course, that could be partly due to these fabrics!

I just love the florals...so small and sweet! And then there are the stripes and...swirls? Wiggly lines? I'm not sure, but I like 'em!



But it should be no surprise that what sold me on this fabric were the hexagon prints! Aren't they precious? Someday I hope to design my own hexagon cheater quilt fabric...

Mind you, I've got a few pieces, including this, that are all ready for use in "faux EPP" projects. In fact, I hope to be sharing one with you later this week!



For now, I'll be enjoying my unforgettable embroidery floss bouquet!

color combo // happy go lucky

Going through embroidery floss and choosing colors that I like together is soooooo much fun! And I've found that looking at fabric collections is almost as fun as that, especially when some of it comes to live with me!

Pre-cuts, specifically charm packs, are a more economical way to get a little bit of lots of prints. They're perfect for small projects, plus they're so very pretty to look at! Recently I've been using the collection of fabric that I've been slowly building up as inspiration for embroidery floss colors. It's a great way to see colors that you like together!

Today I bring you Happy Go Lucky. This fabric truly does make me feel happy-go-lucky, as it brings a smile to my face every time I see it! It's from Moda by Bonnie and Camille, and came out not too long ago, so you can still find plenty of this fabric around if you do a search. Oh, and they have a new line coming soon, which looks like it would coordinate well with Happy Go Lucky and these colors!



I like that the colors have a rainbow quality to them, but when they're used in the fabrics, you don't instantly get "rainbow". The same would be true of using these hues throughout an embroidery project! You could use all of these together, or break them out into smaller groupings of colors. They still look pretty!




The fabric has polka dots, checks, and stripes, but the florals are what make it soft and special. Plus, who could resist a bouquet of embroidery floss to tie it all together?