a bit of color to inspire

I don't have much to post right now, though I'm working on it. In the meantime, I'm just gonna leave these colorful things here for a bit of inspiration.










Related: I love rainbows of color. They are a constant reminder of a promise.

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?

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!

printable // happy papel picado using astrobrights paper

Cinco de Mayo is just a few days away, and although I'm not of Mexican descent, I think that the colors and celebrations of Mexico can be so beautiful. My family loves going to Disney World, and the Mexico pavilion at Epcot is a favorite. Other than that time I was on a train headed for Tijuana (I got off several stops away), Epcot is as close as I've been to Mexico. But when you walk through, one of the things that you see first are the rows of tissue banners that hang everywhere.

Papel picado is a form of folk art, and the tissue pieces are cut with all kinds of amazing and intricate designs. I highly recommend that you do a Google image search for "papel picado" because you'll be astounded!



When Astrobrights challenged me to find a way colorize spring, it didn't take long before I knew that colorful banners were the way to go! I've had a slight love affair with paper for a very long time. I remember seeing my mom make photocopies onto Astrobrights papers when I was 11 or 12 years old, then I was in the graphic design department at school and pored over the paper sample books.

How could I not be smitten? These colors are delicious!



I chose some crazy brights for my banner (Galaxy Gold, Fireball Fuchsia, Planetary Purple, Terrestrial Teal, and Martian Green), but the Astrobrights color range is extensive, so you could easily choose more traditional, less neon, colors for your papel picado.

Download the Happy Papel Picado PDF.

To save on all of the cutting that the real deal has, I've made these so you can print and trim with just a few straight cuts.



Next, punch some holes on the marked circles. I used a 1/8-inch punch, but a standard hole punch will do.



Thread some string through the holes, and get ready for a fiesta!



Hang up one strand...



...or rows and rows! I'm obsessed with putting things in rainbow order these days, so my only regret is that I didn't print these in every Astrobrights color that they make to make one huge rainbow of banners.





But guess what? YOU COULD MAKE ONE ENORMOUS RAINBOW OF ANYTHING! Know how? By entering a very amazing giveaway from Astrobrights! One lucky winner will get the same staggering sample box of paper that I got (it has some of every color!), plus a $50 Office Depot gift card!

When they asked me to colorize my spring, I couldn't turn down this opportunity for you! Enter below using Rafflecopter. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway





Regardless of whether you win or not, I hope you'll hang a bunch of these happy little banners around. They're perfect for Cinco de Mayo or any time you want to bring some color and happiness to your days!

Thanks to Astrobrights for making this post possible. And be sure to visit their Facebook page to see all kinds of lovely ideas that #colorize!

new colors to stitch

The other day I went out for lunch and came home to find a box near my front door. I didn't know what was inside, but I knew it was going to be good because the return label was from DMC Corporation.



Inside was this treasure. A box of 16 new colors of embroidery floss that they are releasing this month! Friends, this really is treasure! It's been a while since new colors came out, which makes this pretty exciting. And though I'm told that these were chosen to work well with existing colors for shading, I find that they stand on their own quite well.



In these new shades, there are eight vibrant hues. Oh my. These are so fantastic! 11-year-old Mollie would have picked these out for bracelets and other fun projects (I found one of those "other projects" recently...I'll share here soon!), and *cough, cough*-year-old Mollie loves them just as much.



There are also eight natural hues. I can tell you, these do feel like colors that were missing all this time. There are a few neutrals (which I get pretty picky about), and a few others that are just right for fall...or perhaps some woodland stitching!




And don't judge me, but this brown is likely to be the color I use the most. I mean, just look at how well it works with even the brights! When I stitch, I use a lot of DMC 838 and 839, and this new color (3882) is a little lighter, but still in the right family, so I can use them together.

The only downside right now is that these 16 colors will only be sold together in a special pack. Eventually, they should be available individually, but until then, I may need to beg my DMC friends for a few extra skeins of this one!




On the upside though, if you buy this pack, you can combine just these colors into some very pretty palettes. The brights and naturals cross over and work well together in lots of ways.

This pack is set to come out this month, so start looking at your local shops, and read more here. Just be aware that not all stores that carry the DMC line will have this just yet.

Oh, and speaking of things that will be coming out soon, I'm working on a new pattern to share with you all, and I'm thinking that I need to use some of these new pretty colors. They're meant to be used, right? Well...we'll see...they're pretty great to just look at too!