Color Works! Finally A Color Guide For The Rest Of Us!

Color Works, The Crafter’s Guide to Color by Deb Menz, Available from Amazon

Hardcover and spiral bound, built to take with you and take the abuse.

Stumped about which colors to use in a craft project? Ths book give you practical, hands-on tools for using color in nine crafts, including knitting, spinning, weaving, quilting, surface design (including stenciling and rubber stamping), hand and machine embroidery, beadwork and paper collage.
Color theory principls are demystified with clear explanations, examples, and more than 270 hand-crafted swatches that bring color palettes to life in all nine mediums.
Contents include: Describing Color, Basic Color Relationships, Understanding Value, Color Contrasts, Color Harmonies, Characteristics of Media (knitting, spinning, weaving, embroidery, quilting, collage…), Choosing Colors and Design.
Includes several pull out tools to take with you to make sure you pick colors that harmonize and play well together.

If you signed up for a Color and Texture class in college, I imaging this would be one of the textbooks that you’d be reading.

So much information. One of the most useful tips I’ve ever received for matching colors is to use the black and white settings on my camera to take a picture. Almost like magic, the hues, and shades just jump out of the frame! It actually made me commit to memory, that particular feature on my digital camera. That in itself is huge!

When asked about color, Eunny Jang sums it up by saying: “Eunny Jang says: ” “Pick two color families (hues). Then pick three variations of each–dark, medium, light. Now you have six colors that go together beautifully!”

Sandy Wiseheart of Knitting Daily has worked up two different swatches using the principles in this book. To download the charts for these swatches, go here (you have to be a member and log in to get the swatch charts).

Next Pattern:

If you’re looking for a sweater knitting pattern that uses up some of your stash and allows you to make just the sweater you want, the Marlina Rib by Shay Johson might be just the thing.

It’s worked with two strands of fingering weight yarn held together to make a DK weight gauge, so you can use the same two yarns throughout or change one or both regularly for an even more colorful look.

The pattern has options to make it either a crewneck or a henley style with buttons, tapered or relaxed sleeves, and a straight hemline or a split hem with buttons (which sounds so cute if you do the henley with split hem and match the buttons on both parts).

It’s also knit from the top down so you can make the body and the sleeves as long as you want. There are 10 sizes available in the pattern, with a chest circumference ranging from 32 to 68 inches, or 81.5 to 172.5 cm. It’s meant to be worn with 4-6 inches/10-15 cm of positive ease at the chest.

The pattern page on Ravelry includes tons of measurements and yardage estimates so you can make sure you’ll get a good fit for your body before you even buy the pattern. Shay also shows a few variations of the sweater so you can see how different options look before you decide how you want to put them together.

The stitch pattern is 1×2 ribbing, which is really easy to do and gives a look almost like fisherman’s rib that’s relaxed and easy to wear.

This sweater looks like a great option for people who are somewhat new to sweater knitting or those who love to have lots of customization options (because it’s like getting multiple sweater patterns in one!).

Check out all the details and grab a copy of the pattern for yourself at Ravelry.

[Photo: Shay Johnson]

Next Pattern:

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