Hi there! Today, I’m sharing a set of solid swatches written in JavaScript that I’ve released as open source on github. Github is a website where software people share open source code (and collaborate). You are welcome to use this data under the MIT license, which basically means “as is” and on commercial web apps.
The colors in the data set came from several sets of swatches available online, so the color representations are only as good as the photo sets they were based on. I’m hoping to put together a few little tools here and there using these open source solid swatches since most of my quilting uses solids, and I wanted to share this data with anyone who might want to use it, for example my friends over at PreQuilt, who are doing fun things with quilting and technology!
I realized that color sorting is a complicated and highly debated topic, so you can sort the solid sets by the options below (hue, saturation, value, luma, and chroma). Click on the options to see how the sorting changes! Weird, huh?!
Saturation
Value
Luma
Chroma
9 Comments
karen s
August 21, 2018 at 8:44 pmHi, Steph! A proud septuagenarian here who can usually noodle things out. But when I click on Hue, Value, etc, there is no color to alter. Help, please 🙂
stephskardal
August 21, 2018 at 11:00 pmThere we go – this is all fixed. Thanks for letting me know! i broke it!
Lara Whitehead
August 22, 2018 at 10:22 pmHi Steph! This is a wonderful source for those of us not computer savvy enough to do it ourselves. Thanks so much for sharing it! Could you give a bit of advice? I’ve just started using EQ8. Will this file upload into that program? I’m not sure how I would know.
Thanks again!
Lara
stephskardal
August 23, 2018 at 1:39 amHi Lara,
I’m not a user of EQ8, so I’d have to get help from someone else for the formatting. EQ8 is not a web-app either, so I doubt you would be able to upload the JavaScript file directly, but again, I would probably need someone else to reformat and test for me. Sorry I can’t help! Maybe someone reading through comments can.
Linda
August 22, 2018 at 11:05 pmLovely! I followed the link to the Github site and wonder if only web developers can use the swatches. Can any sewist or quilt maker use them as references as to what solids are available from the manufacturers shown?
stephskardal
August 23, 2018 at 1:42 amHi Linda! The data is formatted in JavaScript, and you should be able to view it here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stephskardal/fabric-swatches/master/fabricSwatches.js. Think of it sort of like a spreadsheet with one column that represents the color name and one column that represents the hex value. I’m not sure if that’s usable to you, but that’s the format that any websites might need it in. I know Anne over at http://www.play-crafts.com/blog/ has released some that can be imported into Adobe Illustrator.
Caroline
August 23, 2018 at 1:12 amOoh, this is lovely. I wish I could think of a use for them.
I think instead of having Myers-Briggs personality types, we should all categorise ourselves based on how we like our colours ordered. I’m a Luma! 🙂
stephskardal
August 23, 2018 at 1:52 amHaha, Really, I don’t love any of them. I think something more manual works for me!
Digital Swatches for Procreate – Steph Skardal Quilts
January 8, 2022 at 2:16 pm[…] a while back, I shared a solids library available on open source. And in February, I’m teaching Procreate at QuiltCon, so I’ve been prepping the class […]