Color Works: The Crafter's Guide to Color

by Deb Menz

Crafters can explore colors with confidence in a variety of mediums with the advice in this book. The principles of color theory are clearly and simply explained and applied to knitting, spinning, weaving, surface design (including stenciling and rubber stamping), hand and machine embroidery, beadwork, and paper collage. Basic color concepts are presented in sections on color description, values, contrasting and complementary colors, warm and cool colors, undertones, and using color relationships. A pull-out color wheel and handy color chips in perforated format that are easy to remove and use for planning, matching, and shopping for supplies are included.

Genres: Knitting, Art, Reference, Crafts, Nonfiction, Quilting, Theory

152 pages, Spiral-bound

First published May 1, 2004

Reviews

[Celia]

Also by my mother, even better then the first, full of color theories and ways to apply it to life.

[Apryl Anderson]

On first glance, this is expensive eye-candy, but take the time to read every page AND put these (basic) principles (that you can find in any color theory class) into practice, using the clever color cut-out pages as training wheels, and here's the key to developing color confidence. More than a discourse on pigmentation, Menz gives hints on how fibers and textures affect color perception. It remains for us to learn by doing, but Menz provides an excellent head-start.

[Tina]

This book talks about choosing color for crafts ranging from knitting to beading to fabric and paper. It's a great resource for crafters as choosing color is as important to them as any painter. Choosing color for projects can be a complex and confusing part of starting a project so I am glad that a book like this is out there.

[Dory]

ok enough

[Abbey]

BOTTOM LINE: Fascinating, if complicated, exploration of the relationships of differing colors, their saturations, and hues, and suchlike, and how they impact (or don't!) working with several craft formats, especially knitting, weaving/spinning, embroidery, collage, and a few others.

Not a pattern book, this is filled with "compare and contrast" pictures, gorgeous ones, that allow you to easily see the differences and similarities; the prose is a bit lecture-room-ish, i.e., dry and academic, unfortunately, but quite informative. Also has many interesting charts and color wheels and suchlike, and offers a technique for using them to clearly arrange colors according to several scales the author sets out; these might be in general use amongs art schools, but I found them rather confusing at times. I'm a gut-reaction color mixer and like most folks who use that process sometimes come a true cropper, but mainly it's worked well for me in the past. This informative little book helped me see a few things a bit more clearly, but the techniques used and shown in great detail by the author were more confusing than helpful for me. Your mileage may differ, though.

Intriguing and well-produced little hard-cover book, spiral-bound for ease of use (yay!!!) but not my cuppa.

[notgettingenough]

I shouldn't really have this on my 'read' shelf. I carry it with me everywhere. Even now, when most of my books are in storage, I have it with me. I know I SHOULD read it. And yet it makes me nervous. It feels like a maths/science book. It's got graphs in it. So I'm too scared to read it properly. Sick little puppy...what can I say?

[Denise]

WOW! Everything I ever wanted to know about textiles, textures, and color.

[Leah]

This is a terrific reference and primer on color theory. The author uses samples from various fiber arts to illustrate variations in hue and value. A must have for any fiber artist.

[Martine]

great examples of theory