Colour me happy

Today I attended a colour workshop arranged by Sharon from Petite and Sewing at the local sewing guild meeting (thanks Sharon). It was a great workshop facilitated by Wendy Walters from Mirror Mirror and I found out that I am a Dusky Warm Deep colour. After spending so many years in black it was great to look at what colours would suit me best. I purchased a colour swatch similar to the one below - but there are many more shades of colour on my swatch (over 50 colours).



Dusky Warm Dark colours

I found the process fascinating - we first found out if we were warm or cool - if we look better with gold or silver, then it was a process of checking out colour combinations in warm with a scarf with swirls of colour. Once one or two options were chosen the block colours were then held up near your face and the most flattering colours for you were chosen.

The 3 biggest things I learnt were:

1. Colours are different! - Sounds obvious but my question was - how can you tell when there may be a slight colour difference between 2 different blues - how can you tell which one is yours. Wendy said that if you put a colour that you are looking at next to your swatch with your group of colours in it you can tell if it "fits", so even if it isn't in your swatch you can tell if it will live comfortably in with the other colours. This works! I checked with my colour swatch and I checked a blue that is a slightly different colour but it didn't fit with my group as it is too bright. Other blues may be too dull - or too much of a different under colour.
2. Black is yuk - for me anyway. My swatch has a very deep charcoal which looked black to me but when put against actual black the black looked very stark and harsh.
3. The best thing I learnt is matching colours. I am so used to wearing black with maybe a pattern or another colour - and can also match shades of the same colour. But telling which different colours go together was a big problem. Wendy put some great colour combinations together that I would never have thought of. I also wouldn't necessarily put different block colours together yet this looks very classy when done properly. The swatch is great for this. All the colours in your swatch will go together and you can separate out different ones to see how they look together. You can also tell how to choose colours with low contrast as they are close together in  your swatch and ones with high contrast as they are further away from each other in the swatch but still look great together.

Happy days!!

Of course the first thing I did when I got home was to drag out my current sewing project and check the colours. No luck - a bit too much on the bright side. I will still sew and wear (if it turns out) but will keep in mind what looks best for future fabric purchases.

My current project is the StyleArc Anita Peasant Blouse in the below faille fabric.

My last purchase was a beautiful Missoni like knit from Emma One Sock - again - not my colours - a little bit too cool I think - but I am not too worried as it is not a block colour and does have brown in it which is a close brown to one on my swatch.

On the plus side I purchased some absolutely stunning hybrid crepe from EOS. This fabric is fantastic. Feels great and washes well. I chose it from the colour showing on my monitor and it looked like it would match the above faille perfectly. When I received it the colour was much darker with a touch more green in it and - YEAH - it is one of my colours. I also purchased the same fabric in chocolate and navy - both on my swatch!

The colours were fun and I now feel very comfortable purchasing and am actually dying to try out some colour blocking. The workshop is very worthwhile if you have the chance - go to one I say. And to think that I almost missed it. For some strange reason I thought it was on Sunday. Logically I knew it was on Saturday - this is when the sewing meetings happen - it was Saturday in my diary but my mind said Sunday. At least I made it. I would have kicked myself black and blue if I missed it.

Even better than playing with colour was meeting some great sewers and bloggers, many of whose work I have admired. A great group and fantastic sewers.

BTW - has anyone else had problems uploading photos to Blogger? I have to try several times for each photo as I keep getting the below message. This has only been happening the last couple of weeks.

Until next time.