Why are color cards useful?
In tapestry, we often want a very particular color. In the video below I talk about the example of finding a skin tone for a tiny piece of a tapestry I’m weaving on Change the Shed.* It turns out, skin tones are tricky!**
Color or sample cards can be useful for finding the colors you’re looking for in any commercial yarn. Just remember that it is very hard to keep dye lots completely consistent between runs so if you order a particular color one year and want to match it exactly five years later, you may not be able to do that. As you would do in knitting, purchase the yarn you need for a project all at once.
As tapestry weavers we have the advantage of being able to blend colors to get the hue or effect we want. I show this in a small way in the video here. It is quite astounding what can be done with weft bundling and color in terms of changing the hue you see when thin wefts are mixed together in the bundle. Of course a working knowledge of color theory can help you know what to put together to shift a hue in the direction you want to go.***
Give the short video below a watch to start your own yarn sample/color card journey. Watch out, they’re addictive!
Weaversbazaar, Gist Array, and Appletons yarn sample cards
Some yarn lines only have their available colors in photos online or in printed sheets without physical pieces of yarn. While these options give you some idea of what the colors are, they can be wildly off due to printing or monitor colors. The best way to know what color yarn is is to have the yarn in front of you. For that reason, yarn sample cards are valuable just in saving you from making ordering mistakes. Though it is difficult to judge a yarn color exactly from a tiny piece of the yarn, you’ll come a lot closer with a physical sample of it than with something printed or on your monitor.
The video below looks more closely at weaversbazaar’s newest yarn sample card. I also show the Gist Array card. If you’re getting the blog via email you can see the video HERE.
Make sure to scan the resources and footnotes below for more information about color and tapestry weaving.
Resources
Find weaversbazaar online here: https://www.weaversbazaar.com/
Their color card product is here: https://www.weaversbazaar.com/product-list/sample-cards
Gist Array color cards are HERE.
Are you new to tapestry weaving and need some help with choosing your first tapestry yarn hues? Try this blog post: https://rebeccamezoff.com/blog/2023/8/10/choosing-weft-colors-for-tapestry-weaving-overcoming-choice-paralysis
I wrote a post in 2022 with more examples of yarn lines that have sample cards with yarn on them: https://rebeccamezoff.com/blog/2022/2/19/yarn-and-color-using-yarn-color-cards-made-with-actual-yarn
*You can watch the video where I worked through choosing those skin tones and ended up mixing one Gist Array yarn and one weaversbazaar yarn to get what I wanted on Patreon. It is under the category “CTS behind the scenes” and is available to any paying member of my Patreon page. Find it HERE.
**Speaking of skin tones, if you want to see a marvelous tapestry weaver work with skin colors, you should follow Ghislaine Bazir. Scroll back through her Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tissagerie/) and take a look at the marvelous portraits she has woven in the last several years. Her website is HERE and you can access her blog from there as well.
***We’re tackling some color theory concepts right now in the Tapestry Discovery Box course. Join us there if you want to work through this in more depth. We’ll be working on color theory in both the second and third quarters of 2025. I also talk about lots more color theory in the Design Solutions courses.