Sometimes I have a hard time choosing colors. I know that a lot of quilters instinctively know which colors to combine for maximum effect but I have to exert a bit more effort. Here’s an example of my typical thought process: I want to pick a complementary fabric for a red piece. The complement to red is green. This red leans toward orange and the complement of orange is blue so I want a blue green fabric to offset my red fabric. I can usually get this far. But my current project was giving me more trouble. First, I needed several colors, not just one complement. The color of the fabric is a dusty aqua and, frankly, I was having a lot of trouble finding colors I liked with this piece. I tried my usual method (blue green should have complement of red orange) but I didn’t like this combination. So I turned to a really useful tool I have used in the past for help.
The Color Wizard on colors on the web is a handy tool for picking out color schemes for all sorts of purposes. I used it initially when designing my blog. Here’s how it works. Each of the 216 web-based colors has a six-digit alphanumeric number assigned to it which is its unique identifier. You enter this code into the Color Wizard and the program displays various color combinations that work with that color.
I took my light aqua piece of linen to my scanner and scanned in an image. I then took that picture into Photoshop and determined what the color was (you can do this by picking up a sample of the color with the eyedropper tool). I opened the screen for selecting colors and, because my scanned photo was much lighter than the actual fabric, moved my selection around until I found a similar but deeper color that approximated the true fabric color.
This gave me the hex code I needed which I popped into the Color Wizard and came up with a complementary set of colors for my project. I was surprised to see that my estimated “red orange” color was nowhere to be found in the selections (so much for my usual method).
(If you think this tool is as useful and cool as I do, do not over look that little button in the lower right hand corner of the Color Wizard screen that says Donate Now. If this is a tool you will use often please consider making a small donation to the creator of the technology.)
I then went to my thread collection and found some spools that approximated the colors suggested to me by the Wizard and played around until I found a combination that I liked. I find thread useful when determining colors as I have a pretty wide selection and they are small and easy to hold against other objects to test their effects.
I am very excited about the project I’m working on and can’t wait to share it with you. I’m hoping to have it finished to feature as my bag of the week later on this week. Stay tuned!