This Hawaiian quilt by Keri Designs uses DMC Color Variations for the fruit and the borders.
At the recent TNNA Market DMC released 24 new colors in their Color Variations line. They are available in both #5 perle and floss. They bring the number of colors in the line to 60.
I have used the perle before, but this little piece was my first chance to use the floss.
A note about the new colors. There is a wonderful variety of colors, here. There are semi-solids or shades of a single hue in several colors, including three greens, two gold,the wonderful red seen in the border, three great blues (including a pale one that would be great for skies), and a violet. Some of these are very subtle, but others have almost as much variation as DMC’s variegated colors.
They are designed to be used like the many popular lines of overdyed and hand-dyed thread and they make great substitutions for them However, as you can see from the piece I stitched (a Keri Designs Hawaiian quilt), the color transitions are more sudden than in many hand-dyes. The color runs seem to be a bit shorted as well.
What this means is that those transitional colors that are the mixtures of two adjacent colors in a hand-dye are absent here. This makes the colors clearer, and the transitions sharper. Using these threads you won’t find your color diluted by these shades. However if you like that transition or want those intermediate shades, these threads won’t work for you.
For me, it really depends on the project. IN this piece I used floss for the breadfruit, both on its own (center fruit) and combined with a fine metallic (corner fruit). As you can see one color predominates, but the floss worked will in both applications. The perle was used for the border. Here you can see the length of the color run and how sudden the transition can be.
One note, the floss uses DMC’s newer wrappers. They are one long piece. They are different, but they do make it much easier to use the skeins as pull skeins.
I liked both these threads and I expect to be using them much more often in my work.
There are also some new shades that are combinations of analogous colors. I particularly like the three “berry” shades that are combinations of red-violet/pink and violet. The light, medium, and dark shades could make an interesting combination. Others of this type include a vivid autumn leaves shade and a wonderful combo of dark browns and grays that would be perfect for bark.
But perhaps I was most taken with the three true multi-colors. All of them have lots more white than is often seen in overdyed thread and this gives them an appealing lightness. Purple Pansy combines, white with two shades of violet and yellow. Very Merry is a Christmas combination with red being more an accent than an equal partner. My favorite is Cotton Candy, a great combination of pink, blue, and white that would be so perfect for baby presents.
Please note: These threads were provided to me as part of DMC’s designer program. I was not compensated for this review.
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