How to Use Value to Create Custom Color Schemes

Choosing colors can be intimidating. Just thinking of the time and care you’ll take to sew a project makes it tough to commit to a color scheme, especially if you’re not sure what it will end up looking like! For that very reason, I make samples in different color palettes with detailed color guides that you can follow and be confident about your end result.

But hey, what if you don’t like prefer the colors I chose? Not everyone has my taste for non-traditional colors. Not to worry! Use my color guides as your jumping off point and incorporate the cheats I show you below to achieve the more traditional (or even wilder) color combos of your dreams.

IT’S ALL ABOUT VALUES
For the cheats below, value is key. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color. White is the lightest value and black is the darkest, with infinite levels of gray value in between. If you have ever seen a black and white photo, you are looking at color translated into value.

Felt palettes that work well usually involve a nice range of values from light to dark, which is what I shoot for in my samples. Now that you understand the concept, you can substitute similar value colors to change up my pre-chosen palettes with confidence. Like maybe you look at my photos and think “What’s with her weird fixation on fuchsia? I like red better.” Fortunately, red has the same value as fuchsia, so try subbing it in! If you are not sure, do what I do: get felt scraps in your chosen colors and lay them against each other to see how they look before starting. (Don’t forget to squint as you do this. It helps in a way I cannot explain.)

Say you are looking at this Benzie color guide for Partridge & Pear as shown below, but you do not care for the light blue color. The easiest fix is to choose a color of equal value which will still coordinate (like light green) and sub it in everywhere that is blue, including the DMC embroidery.

In the same way, say you are looking at the pink/blue Partridge ornament seen above, but you want to use a more traditional Christmas palette of cream, red, and green. Sub in cream for the pink, light green for the light blue, and red for the magenta. All similar values, see? In this case you can keep the orange beard and burgundy beak since they blend nicely with your palette, and you only need to change a few embroidery colors.

SWITCHING BETWEEN MMMCRAFTS PALETTES:
I’ve heard from a good many folks who wish to make a whole set of ornaments using only one of the FOTF Jewel Tone palettes instead of using all three palettes, like I did for my samples. You can use the same value cheat to do that! Start with the color guide for the ornament you are making (like the Sapphire Colly Bird shown below). Sub in similar value colors from the palette you want (in this case, Emerald) while keeping colors the two palettes have in common, as shown below. You will need to adjust the colors of the embroidery too.

And if you don’t happen to like prefer the colors of my Jewel palettes, you can use the same value method to sub in traditional Christmas colors like green, gold and red, shown above.

LIMITED PALETTES MAKE IT EASY
Not everyone shares my love of using eleventy different DMC floss colors on one ornament. If you are looking to simplify, here’s my suggestion: Ignore my color guides and start from scratch by creating your own limited palettes, which are much easier to work with and also look lovely!

A limited palette of white, red, and pink shown above gives the ornaments a Scandi Christmas look. Always include a light, medium, and dark value to give it some pizzazz. Other limited palette possibilities are:
White + yellow + dark mustard
Cream + aqua + teal
White + yellow green + olive green
and so on!

I hope this has been helpful for you! Still pondering? Look around your house and clothes closet and Christmas boxes to see what colors you gravitate toward. Which shades give you a little lift and feeling of joy or peace when you see them? If you choose hues that you LOVE to work with, how can you go wrong?