Creating Your Dream Dreamscape Palette 🌈

It's been an absolute dream seeing all the Dreamscape Vest Projects that have been popping up on our feed since we launched the pattern with Erin of Picky Femme in December! One of the best things about it is seeing how knitters have come up with different colour palettes and yarn choices in their projects. You can see an array of Dreamscapes by knitters all over the world by searching 'Dreamscape Vest' on Instagram.

As you can see, most of the samples used for the photos of this pattern use a saturated mix of vivid colours, with one sample leaning towards an almost completely cool palette.

Erin says,

"It has been so interesting seeing the versions come in- some of my favourite ones have all been tonal variations of one colour family (all cool, all warm) + one wildcard colour. My sensibility is always to go for variations of primary colours + two colours opposite each other on the colour wheel + a neutral to help the brightest contrast pop. The makers who have chosen unexpected base colours (pink, purple, blue, yellow) make the most interesting combos!"

So, how to choose your own palette? In Erin's samples, she used a marled, worsted-weight yarn with a soft alpaca halo that adds gentle fuzziness and depth to colourwork. As she says in the pattern, the haze softly blurs the edges of the shapes, while the marl brings visual and textural interest to the two-colour intarsia.  If you have mohair scraps on hand, you could combine a few to meet gauge, or pair a DK-weight yarn with mohair to mimic that soft marl effect.

 

One of our favourite ways to choose a palette is with scraps! Pull out your leftover yarns in weights that could work, and see what looks good together. Sometimes having limited choices leads to unexpected combinations that are surprisingly beautiful. The amount of scraps you have in each colour might also do the work of determining colour placement for you as you'll want to use larger amounts for the bigger sections of colour and smaller amounts for the smaller sections, etc. 

 

If that option overwhelms you, or you don't have enough scraps to spare, then one method we love at Pom Pom is to look at reference images you love to see what colours make up the palette of the image. There are six to seven colours used in Dreamscape (depending on your size), so you'd want an image that could provide those. Of course you can use multiple shades of the same colour if you want. 

We also love the idea of a monochrome version - perhaps in different shades of blue or whatever colour you like, for example. 

You may also want to play with the main colour - the colour that gets used with the contrast colours throughout - to really amp up the marled effect and how the contrast colours appear. In the version below, Erin used a pink base and we love how the other colours mixed with that shade. It would be exciting to see Dreamscape with a black main colour!

If you are interested in using Garland, the yarn used for the contrast colours in Erin's samples, have a look at these swatches with Garland held double for some inspiration: 

To make things a little easier for you to visualise, Erin created the colouring pages below for you to experiment with. She's given them in a few sizes that should give you an idea of how your version might look, no matter which size you end up making. (Note that the adult size 3 colouring sheet should work for planning colours across all adult sizes as a general guide even tho scale of the shapes are slightly different across the sizes. Same goes for the kids' sizes.) If you have a drawing app like Procreate, you should be able to open these files and drag and drop colours into the spaces. You can of course use good old fashioned coloured pencils, crayons, or markers too!

Ready to cast on?! Get the pattern here on our site, or via Ravelry. 

4-6 Years Old - Front

4-6 Years Old - Back

6-8 Years Old - Front

6-8 Years Old - Back

Adult Size 3 - Front

Adult Size 3 - Back