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A picture of a plastic thread box with lots of different green embroidery threads wound onto bobbins. Overlaid is a blue square with white text that says - hand embroidery, how to pick a colour palette for embroidery, www.embellishedelephant.co.uk

How to pick a colour palette for embroidery

June 29, 2022

With my kits I pick the colour palette for you. When I do this I aim to pick colours that come mostly from the threads that I stock, this helps reduce the amount of different colours I need to hold to fulfil kit orders. Where I can’t find the right shade (it’s always the green that isn’t quite right!) I look to my wider thread stash and thread cards to pick the perfect colour.

With my free patterns, I provide the design and leave the stitch and colour choices to you. I do this for two reasons firstly, I want you to feel like you can make those creative choices for yourself. I know this isn’t how everyone likes to work but the option is there for you to try. Secondly, if you do want a little more support and guidance and to benefit from my stitch and colour expertise then I offer this detail in the paid for version of the pattern.

Here are a few tips to pick a colour palette for your embroidery:

A picture of a Welsh poppy embroidery in an embroidery hoop held in from of three yellow Welsh poppies.

1. Start from real life

When I’m designing patterns I use photos to guide me on form and colour choices. Quite often flora come in different colour variations and I pick the colour that I love the most (or have the best thread match for). In the case of these Welsh poppies I went for a slightly more orange colour as that is a variation I had come across and I preferred it to the yellow.

A picture of an embroidery of three variegated purple crocuses. There is a green background and to the left of the hoop is a pair of stork scissors and to the right a bundle of colourful threads

2. Look at how you can combine colours

When I originally stitched the crocus pattern I stitched in solid purple and knew it didn’t look right so I experimented with adding a darker purple which helped to define the individual petals better. I also combined one thread of yellow with one of orange for the centre of the crocus as neither colour on their own was quite right.

A close up picture of an abstract embroidery featuring a monstera leaf. The leaf has a yellow stem, pink inner sections and light green leaf tips

3. Go abstract

You don’t have to use real life colours when picking your colour palettes. A great example of this is this piece I stitched from a kit by Lucy Freeman.

This is obviously a monstera leaf but the traditional greens have been replaced with pinks and greys.

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