Harvest Hues: Color Satisfaction!

My favorite aspect of beginning any embroidery project is the consideration of color.

Even if I end up not using a variety of colors, or even if I end up using no color at all, considering the potential of colors is always exciting to me!

In our next Stitch Snippet stitch-along, called Harvest Hues, color played a big role in the preparation of the project. The greatest color challenge was finding a good quality felt that we could use for finishing.

While there are a lot of wool felts and wool blend felts on the market, pinning down just the right colors that will work well together is harder than you might think!

I’m a huge fan of 100% wool felt for many projects, and with Harvest Hues, I spent lots of time and expense ordering 100% wool felt samples, wool felt swatch cards, and the like. This effort and money is an investment, really, because it gives me a pool of resources to choose from when I look for felt in the future.

Finally, though, I had to admit defeat. I never found anything that I loved in the right color, weight, and finish of 100% wool felt.

So I went down the road of wool felt blends.

Now, wool felt blends are not a sub-par fabric, depending on what you’re doing. With this type of finishing, they’re actually quite nice to work with. In fact, with many types of needlework crafts – like 3-dimensional ornament or stuffed sculpture / toy making or finishing – wool blends are really nice to work with. And they usually are available in a much wider and more vivid variety of colors.

While red, green, and orange are not difficult colors to nail down, I had such a hard time finding a yellow-orange that really proclaimed Autumn to me… until I found the wool blend pictured in the photo above.

What is difficult to tell in the photo (but what you’ll see in person if you happen to invest in the kit for Harvest Hues) is that this particular yellow-orange, is that the felt is a mottled felt – a deep yellow mixed with a touch of orange. Think of that vibrant yellow-orange of a squash blossom, and you’ll get the idea!

When the samples arrived for this line of felt, I was so pleased with this color especially. As soon as it arrived in the mail and I opened it up, I grabbed some scissors, needles, threads, beads, and started test stitching with it.

And lo, how I rejoiced! After about two months of color-seeking among all grades and types of felt, I found what I was looking for.

I love it when that happens!

Harvest Hues is such a fun project!! It’s a stress-free, high-satisfaction sort of project – which is always the best kind of project, don’t you think?

I hope you’re excited about it, and I hope you’re able to join us as we work through the stitch-along together!

More coming soon… stay tuned!

What’s a Stitch Snippet Stitch Along?

If you’re eager to know what a Stitch Snippet stitch-along is, you’ll find all the previous Stitch Snippets that we’ve worked through together on Needle ‘n Thread listed here under Tips and Techniques, in the first section “Hand Embroidery Lessons & Step-by-Step Projects.”

We’ve worked through nine Stitch Snippets together so far, from 2022-2024. The lessons are still available here on the website for free, and you’ll still find some of the kits for the stitch-alongs available here in my shop. These little projects are a great way to familiarize yourself with many aspects of hand embroidery and finishing, and will help you hone your embroidery and finishing skills.