5 tips for choosing the right yarn colours for your next machine knitting project (as recommended by our members)

For some machine knitters, choosing the colours for their next knitting project can be almost as difficult as the machine knitting itself, and can even hold them back from getting started. 

As a machine knitter myself, I’ve never really worried about choosing colours, in fact, it’s one of my favourite parts of any project. 

However, I know a lot of other machine knitters really struggle, lacking confidence and worrying that they’re doing it “wrong" - which actually is impossible, but spending all that time machine knitting with poor colour choices and being disappointed with the end result can really hinder people.

It can be really overwhelming if you have a lot of different coloured yarns to choose from too - there is such a thing as too many lovely colour combinations. 

Luckily, our Machine Knit Community (MKC) is full of professional machine knitters and hobbyists who share their expertise in response to questions like this (alongside all our masterclasses, knit-a-longs and more). 

So today, we’re sharing those tried-and-tested suggestions from members of the MKC that make choosing yarn colours much easier, and will save you precious hours of knitting. 

Here’s how to choose the yarn colours for your next machine knitting project.

1. Use yarn wrapping or yarn winding to help select colours

This is a technique that a lot of professionals use when they are putting together colour schemes for machine knitting and weaving.

A colour can appear very different depending on the colours next to it, and this is what yarn winding can help you to explore. It’s really easy to do - simply wrap yarn around a strip of card, in similar proportions as your finished product would be, as you can see in the image below. 

By playing with combinations, positions and proportions of coloured yarn wrapped around the card, you can decide which ones that make your heart sing. 

You can also save all your yarn winding cards to refer back to time and time again, whenever you are planning your next machine knitting project.

We have a class about the importance of colour, choosing colours and yarn wrapping/winding with Harriet Wallace-Jones from Wallace Sewell available to MKC members, and one from knitted textile designer Kate Box too.

2. Take a black and white photo of your yarns

Almost 20% of the members who replied to our thread in the Machine Knit Community use the black and white photo method, so it’s a pretty popular one.  

Taking a photo of the yarns you might use for your next machine knitting project, and changing it to monochrome helps you to see the contrast better, without the actual colours themselves distracting your brain.

On an iPhone, you can take a photo in monochrome by selecting filters in the camera app (the 3 circles), or to edit a photo you’ve already taken, click on the desired photo and select “edit” - here you will see “filters” at the bottom. Select “mono” for black and white. Android phones have very similar filters in the camera app and when editing too. 

For good colour work, you need colours that stand out against each other. In the photos below, the pale blue and white yarn on the right hand side look like a good contrast, but in monochrome you can see that tonally they are actually quite similar, and won’t contrast very well.

3. Twist the coloured yarns together 

Knitwear designer Terri Laura from Shetland teaches this technique, and did a class in the Machine Knit Community all about this last year, which is still available for members to watch back.  

If you have 2 different yarns and want to see if they have a good contrast, you take the ends of both and twist them together, so that you can get a good idea of how much they contrast against each other.  

As you can see in the images, the first two yarns have very little contrast, whereas the second two yarns have a good amount of contrast, making them a good choice for the next machine knitting project. 

4. Use computer software to visualise the colours of your machine knitted garment

In our thread about choosing colours in the Machine Knit Community, our members made a few other suggestions in addition to the popular methods above. 

One great idea for choosing yarns for a new project is to use computer software like DesignaKnit (DAK), which is a knitting and pattern drafting programme allowing you to plan out projects and programme your knitting machine. 

Or you can use an online knitting pattern editor like Stitch Fiddle to help visualise what your project will look like, and how the colours will sit together. 

5. Take inspiration from other machine knitters and garments 

Many machine knitters (and creative people in general) take inspiration from all sorts of places and keep it together in a photo album on their phone, on a Pinterest board, or in their saved section of Instagram. 

We have a whole blog post filled with 10 inspiring machine knitters to follow on Instagram to get you started with some inspiration, and while you’re there, why not follow MKC on Instagram, and we’re on Pinterest too!

It’s really handy to have visual inspiration like this to flick through when you’re not sure which colours to go for when starting a new machine knitting project.  

One of our members recommended keeping track of colour combinations others have used on Ravelry too, as well as taking inspiration from textile designers like Alison Dupernex and Alice Starmore.

At the end of the day, when choosing yarns for your next project, there is no such thing as the “right colours” for anything, and a lot of it will come down to personal preference and what makes you happy.

For more machine knitting advice, have a browse of the MKC blog. If your questions aren’t answered there, consider joining the MKC as a member, so that you can ask questions, join masterclasses, and have access to our archive of videos from our live events. 

We re-open our doors to new members every January, April, and September, but you can join the waiting list now.