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Color Harmonies in Crochet

We went pretty deep last week with color, I know. I even broke out the big guns with the Fibonacci sequence, right!? It may sound like a lot of math geekery (and okay, maybe it is) but really it's a tool that can be used to help make planning your projects a little bit easier. I even wrote an article about it for Interweave a few years ago! You should check out using Fibonacci numbers for striping out even if you don't think math is fun, ha ha. Like I said, it's a tool and it works beautifully for fades, stripes, and more.

Before I get too much into color again, though, let's have a look at a video that will walk you through using Coolors to create a color palette. You'll get to hear me talk through applying some of the concepts we discussed last week in real time!

And here's the finished palette with my old leaf new leaf picture, in case you're not able to watch the video right now:

Red, orange, yellow, and brown Color palette created with an image of an old dried brown leaf still hanging onto a cottonwood tree alongside the beginnings of new spring leaves budding.

Have you tried making your own color palette yet? I have been, admittedly, having a bit too much fun with it recently! I don't have any projects in mind that I need to choose colors for; I just really enjoy playing with color! In case you can't tell. I just can't help myself! Will you be joining me in the color palette creation madness? If you do, I wanna see what you come up with!!

Okay. Enough about creating color palettes from images already. Let's talk about color harmonies. Briefly. Ish. First up, monochromatic colors.


You'll see these a lot in ombre or gradient mini skein sets. I used a gorgeous peachy colored set from Leading Men Fiber Arts for the Sibyllinity Scarf.

Stitch detail of the Sibyllinity Colorblock Crochet Scarf showcasing the gradient from soft, peachy pink through to a bright pink on the upper edge, separated by a solid line in black with spike stitches worked into a solid block of off white on the bottom half.

Just look at that beautiful fade from the lightest of peachy pinks through to the most brightly saturated pinks! LMFA does really lovely monochromatic gradients in all sorts of colors. And they usually have lots of mini and half skein options for you to choose from, too! You can shop their gradients here. If you happen to have a bunch of sock yarn scraps, though, you can create your own monochromatic fade and then pair it with a contrast color for the black line with spike stitches along with a coordinating neutral for the cream color block of this scarf. Psst, this could also be modified to make a gorgeous blanket! And yes, I'd use the Fibonacci Sequence to determine the width of the two large color blocks! Probably ... 3:5 or so.


How about analogous colors?


How do they differ from monochromes? This is where you really need to pull out your dusty old color wheel. Analogous colors are simply colors that are adjacent to one another. Imagine, for example, selecting a primary color like red and then a secondary color that's next to it, like orange or purple. Now imagine creating a color fade between those two colors. That would be an analogous color scheme. You could even fade further over into the next primary or secondary color one way or another. Orange through yellow to green makes a fun color scheme, for example! I don't have a design that specifically showcases this (hmm, gonna have to remedy that!), but you can actually see a lot of different color harmonies at play in Inflections of Color!