Tag: colour ideas

Happy Circles II – My new experiment in random colour placement

I’m working on a new project – a cushion cover!
I’m finally trying out a colour combination that I’ve wanted to try for a long time. The inspiration comes from a cushion I have from IKEA. It is a mixture of green and blue tones, with a yellow undertone in the green shades. And again I wanted to try a random colour placement.

I’m still a long way from having finished it. But so far I like it so much that I wanted to show it off!

My Colours

Stylecraft Special DK

1822 – Pistachio
1027 – Khaki
1065 – Meadow
1725 – Sage
1820 – Duck Egg

I opted for a similar design to the Happy Circles wall hangings I made last year. Do you remember them? You can find the free pattern here or on Ravelry.

Back then I used 15 different colours and created the random arrangement of the colours with a random generator. And I was totally happy with the result!

If you are interested in the process of my colour placement you will find all information in this post.

Random colour placement

After the random colour placement worked so well last year, I wanted to use the same method for the cushion cover.

Well…

Using a random generator

I have to admit that using a random generator didn’t work out so well this time.

I guess it has to do with how a randomiser works. This is a very complex topic – at least that’s how it seems to me. And that’s why I don’t want to go into it any further here. But if you are interested in this topic you can read about it on the Random.org website. I used their list generator for my purposes.

Anyhow, as a result of the random generator, my colours were – of course – not evenly distributed. By this I mean that the colours used occurred in different numbers. No matter how often or in what order I entered the colours, one colour always appeared very often and the others very little.

So, using only 5 colours therefore led to an imbalance – at least in my eyes.

I think when more colours are used, this will not even be noticeable. And with a larger project, such as a blanket, it can even look very nice if one colour is more dominant than the others.

However, I didn’t like it at all on the relatively small cushion cover.

Creating my own randomness

After several attempts I decided to create my own ‘randomness’ with a more balanced distribution of colours.

To do this, I made a table in which I first entered the colours for the first round of my circles. The letters A – E are the placeholders for my 5 colours.

I would like to design the front of my cushion cover with 4 x 4, i.e. 16 squares in total.

Therefore, I decided to start 4 circles with colour A and 3 circles each with one of the other 4 colours. That makes a total of 16.

To determine the colours for the second round, I started at the first square with colour B and entered the colours consecutively downwards. To avoid two rounds having the same colour, I skipped the relevant letter in these cases. For example, in Square 6, the correct order should have been B in Round 2, but I skipped to C, etc. Afterwards I did the same for round 3, starting with the letter C.

This is the result:

From circles to squares

I then assigned the 5 colours that I had chosen to the letters A – E:

A – Duck Egg
B – Meadow
C – Sage
D – Pistachio
E – Khaki

As with my wall hangings, I then turned the circles into squares. For this I added two more rounds in 1005 Cream, also from Stylecraft Special DK.

Creating a layout

Similar to my wall hangings, I created the final layout with the random generator.

I entered the digits 1 – 16 (which stand for the 16 squares) into the list generator of random.org and generated a random result. According to the this result, I arranged the squares on the places 1 -16 in the 4 x 4 layout, made a few more changes until I liked it, and voilà …

The two grids on the left show the places numbered from 1 -16 (the small one) and the numbers of the squares that were arranged on this places. On the right is the finished layout …

And, to make things a little easier:
Below my detailed list of the colours used for the circles for each round and the corresponding layout.

Final colour scheme and layout

Joining the squares

Currently I am working on the join…

For my wall hangings, I had opted for a relatively inconspicuous joining method in the colour of the squares. In comparison, I now use Pistachio, so it’s more of a contrasting colour. And I opted for the Zig Zag Slip Stitch Join.

I really like how it turns out!

After joining, I will probably have to make a few more rounds around the whole panel to achieve the desired size.

However, I’m still not sure what the back should look like. Single coloured or colourful? I think I’m leaning towards single-coloured, but that could still change …

Have a great start to the new week 💕

Happy Circles – A new pattern

New Year – new wall decorations

It is already mid January and I hope you had a great start in the new year! Hubby and I got off to a very cosy start.
After that, however, we started renovating another room in our house – just in keeping with the theme of new beginnings.
We want a new insulated floor – the same one we have already laid in the living room and hallway. After that there will be new cupboards. So again, it looks a bit chaotic here at the moment. Never ending story …

However, within all the renovation stuff, we have a new wall decoration in our living room! But of course these are not the result of our renovation work but of my colour experiments last year.

My colour experiment in 2024

You may remember that last year I experimented a little with random colour placement. This project really opened my eyes to new ways of combining colours.

I started by selecting yarn in 15 different shades from my Stylecraft Special DK stash. Mostly leftovers from other projects.

But instead of manually compiling all possible colour combinations in a table, I tried an online random generator, Random.org . They offer a lot of free services, including a list randomizer. It works wonderfully for generating random colour combinations. I described in detail how this works in an earlier post. You can read all about it here

I needed a bit of colour – Colour Experiment Part 1

My first Panel

To try out the random colour combinations, I started crocheting little circles. Each with 3 rounds. In doing so, I have strictly adhered to the results that the random colour generator had given me. I only replaced a colour if it would otherwise have appeared twice in a circle. In the end, this resulted in 25 colourful circles, which I then turned into small squares. I joined them in a 5 x 5 layout. To determine the exact arrangement of the squares, I also used the random generator.

Details on my colour placement and layout can be found in this post

Random Layout – Colour Experiment Part 2

After adding a small border my finished panel was about 52 x 52 cm.

At first I had thought of making a cushion cover out of it. But then I decided to use it as a wall decoration.

My second Panel

Overall, I was so thrilled with the result that I have since made a second panel.

I used the same colours and the same process as with the first panel. The colour combinations are completely different, but it looks just as great.

Here the results:

The table below shows the colour combinations that I have used for my second panel. The colours are listed for each circle in the order of rounds 1, 2 and 3. As for my first panel each circle was squared with two more rounds in the colour Graphite.
At the same time, the table shows the layout in which I have arranged the squares. 

I had already listed the pattern for the squares, joining, and border in a separate post. If you are interested you can find it here

Step by step – A new wall decoration – Colour experiment Part 3

But in addition, I have now written down the pattern again and summarised it in a pdf file. Besides the actual pattern, this document contains the colour combinations and layouts for both panels.
So you can also download the complete file here.

Please note: Some left over yarns and 1 ball of Stylecraft Special DK for squaring and joining are sufficient for one panel.

Happy CirclesDownload

I hope you like it as much as I did!

Have a lovely time 💕

Costa Nova Cal – Some colour ideas

Have you already seen that Ana from One Skein of Love is launching a new Cal?
It will start on Thursday, 07. July 2022. The Intro file with all relevant information is now available on Ravelry. During the Cal there is a 30 % discount on the price and an extra 20% discount for members of Ana‘s Facebook group.

Although I am one of the testers I don’t hav a blanket to show you this time. And no own colour way, sorry!
After crocheting almost exclusively test projects since autumn of last year, I needed a break. I urgently want to finish my (hubby‘s) Midnight Snowflakes blanket and a shawl I started designing months ago.
So I “only“ checked the pattern by reading, counting stitches, checking colours, diagrams and everything and reading again … checking again…

But my fingers were itching! Ana designed lovely costal motifs to pay homage to her favourite beach: Costa Nova.

So I couldn‘t help. I had to think about colours that would suit the pattern and that I would use. I thought I would show you my favourite ideas, maybe you will like some of them?

(At this point once again many thanks to Stylecraft Yarns who allowed me to use the colour samples from their website.)

This one is my absolute favourite

and this one was my first idea

But I also love this one

Hard to decide, isn’t it?
If you take part in the Cal I wish you a lot of fun already now 💕