How I use my colour swatches to shop online for fabric

Buying fabric online can be a challenge, but if you are like me and have limited fabric shops nearby, or you want a specific type/brand, then sometimes online is the only option.

Since I analysed my dominant colours, I now only want to buy fabric that works well within my soft palette. So let me show you how I use my swatches to help me to get the best match.

Here I am on one of my favourite fabric stores, shopping for some beautiful linen to make new dresses.

I have all my swatch cards to hand and skim through the website only taking a deeper look at the colours that are the same tones as my palette.

Here is one that I think works well with the top brown colour (rose brown).

Once I’ve found a colour that looks like it may work well, I zoom in on the picture to take a closer look, this may lose the quality a little but it still gives you a good idea.

Next up I found a lovely french clay linen, this matches really well to my neutral shades, somewhere between the shell shade (2nd from top) and stone (4th from the top). Remember that you don’t have to get an exact match, you are just looking for the right undertones (warm or cool), value (light or deep) and chroma (soft or clear).

I did order both of these fabrics and they are absolutely gorgeous. I’m really pleased with how they work with my palette. I can’t wait to make them up into beautiful dresses.

You can also use the swatches to help you to select amazing print fabric. Here I was looking for a combination of colours from my soft palette and I think I smashed it!! This picks up wonderfully on the soft white, shell and sage colours.

I’ve got to admit that I went ahead and purchased this fabric too. Well I had gone about 2 years without buying any so was definitely due some treats :)

Being able to actually see and feel fabric is always going to be the safest option. So its a great idea to order swatch samples if you can. I purchased the samples for Merchant & Mills linen as I know that this is fabric that I will use a lot. It’s then really easy to check which colours work well in your palette.

If you don’t sew, you can use the same approach to purchase clothing online. Check the colours of the fabric against your swatch cards in the same way that I have for fabric. Of course lighting on a website can sometimes be off and the garment may look different when it arrives, but remember you can return it if you are not happy with it.

If you would like to find out more about a colour consultation click Here