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Spring Palette Challenge Phase One: Define Your Challenge


{photo inspiration above: from the Rachel Ashwell boutique, by Jessica of Such Pretty Things}

It’s time to kick off the Spring Palette Challenge! If you missed it, this is a ten week challenge for choosing a Spring color palette, and sewing a mini seasonal wardrobe from it. For the next week, we’re defining what our challenges will be.

Here’s what to do:

  • Gather your inspiration. I know some of you said you already have palettes in mind, so this might not be as necessary. I’m a pretty visual person, so it really helped me to pull out photos and swatches for gathering my ideas.
  • Consider fabric. I found it very helpful to look at the fabric I already have, as I don’t want to end up buying too much. You might also scout around online or at your local shops. Fabric stores are usually happy to cut swatches for you.
  • Make an inspiration board. This is optional, but I find it extremely helpful! Your inspiration doesn’t need to be dresses you want to recreate, it could be anything that inspires you color-wise! Flowers, scenery, natural objects, old photos, whatever is speaking to you. I made my board in Photoshop, but you could also pull things together using a site like Polyvore or Pinterest.
  • Pick your palette. Once you’ve worked with all this inspiration, you should have a pretty good idea of your palette. Define your colors. You can choose as many or few colors as you like. Again, I used photoshop to create the little palette above, but you could also tear colors from magazines, use paint swatches from the hardware store, or use a site like Colour Lovers to create a palette.
  • Pick the number of pieces to make. If you’re busy, you could choose to do just a couple garments, or even one garment with a couple accessories. If you’re more ambitious, you could do many more. It’s up to you.
  • Finally, post your palettes and challenges on the Forum! I started a thread just for this phase of the challenge, where you can post your palette, and your chosen challenge. Of course, you could also post them on your blog and/or the CP flickr group, but I’m hoping the forum will give us a better way to share and converse with each other.

I’ll post my own as a follow-up to this post, as well as in the forum!

Sarai Mitnick

Founder

Sarai started Colette back in 2009. She believes the primary role of a business should be to help people. She loves good books, sewing with wool, her charming cats, working in her garden, and eating salsa.

Comments

poet

February 15, 2011 #

Hello there, can I still join this? Do I need to use any of the Colette patterns or can I just draft and make up as I go the way I usually sew?