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Color and texture: Peach, cream, black

peach-black-board

Where do you find inspiration for the things you make?

For me, it often comes from the color color palettes used in the past. Sometimes they’re in vintage clothing or textiles, but just as often it can be an illustration, a postcard, a photo, or a book cover. They can be so fresh and unusual, and a perfect starting point for a sewing project.

Take colors like peach and coral for example. They are not nearly as popular as they were 50 or 60 years ago, but they are total showstoppers: soft and feminine, flattering on a variety of people, and incredibly versatile.

In this case, I was inspired by this amazing bit of ephemera from Sheaff Ephemera. The colors really popped for me, and made me think of soft peach silk with inky black velvet and shiny glass buttons.

{ above: (1) ten peach cabochons (2) vintage glass buttons (3) vintage Japanese silk (4) pink fabric-covered buttons (5) amy butler fabric }

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

Valerie

November 23, 2009 #

Ah, I am so happy you posted this. On Saturday I popped in to my local frame shop to have a custom mat cut for a print I already had. It is a vintage-inspired print with a lot of black and green and red and teal with birds and a scripture on it, and I had a very hard time picking just the right mat. At the last minute I settled for something totally different than I normally would and picked the peachy-pink color of the flower petals to go against the black frame. Reading your post just made me that more confident in my choice and now I can’t wait to get it back from the frame shop and hang it up!

Zoe

November 23, 2009 #

Beautiful mood board! Can’t wait to see more. I think it is easy to stick to colours you feel comfortable with, so it’s great to be shown options you wouldn’t have previously considered. My best friend recently bought a stunning bright coral satiny dress. When I found a similar colour fabric piece in a bargain fabric store I snapped it up. I never would have looked at it twice if I hadn’t seen her dress, and seeing your post I’m even more convinced by it’s fab-ness.

jen

November 25, 2009 #

i’m completely with you on this color scheme. (and i just love the ephemera that you’ve posted!) one of my favorite colors is coral (or similar a pink-orange). my husband and i held a reception a week before halloween (we got married in august), for our friends, and i used white, cream, black, pink and light orange decor (coral party supplies don’t exist apparently!) and it was lovely. the colors together are so warm and magical.

anyway, i TOTALLY look forward to your new patterns!

sorry for the rambling comment. ;)

Sarai

November 26, 2009 #

I’m glad you guys like it, it’s one of my favorite color combinations. Something about it seems vintage, but in sort of a sleek & sexy way.

Katie

December 1, 2009 #

ooh, i love those covered buttons in #4- do you have any idea where they’re from?

Sarai

December 1, 2009 #

Katie, I just realized the part of the post with credit/links had been cut off somehow! I added it back in.

The buttons are from petitefabrique on Etsy, aren’t they cute?

Katie

December 1, 2009 #

Thanks for that! I love covered buttons of all sorts actually, but those are particularly cute..