Thanks right off to my daughter, Rachel/@snippetsofsweetness, who kept up tradition and ordered us official Pantone Color of the Year swatch cards after the 2021 colors were announced. A pair this year - Illuminating and Ultimate Gray - the goal was now to find fabrics that closely 'matched' the actual swatches. This year I happened to have four different fabric manufacturers' color cards in hand, so that's pretty much where I focused my attention, which was fine, because I found good matches right there.
Surprisingly (no offense of course), two of them, RJR Cotton Supreme Solids and Painter's Palette Solids had nothing I considered really close. Obviously they have yellows and grays that would be great to pair, but as far as having a match to the definitive Pantone swatch cards, they did not.
But in looking through the Michael Miller Cotton Couture and Robert Kaufman Kona color cards, I found several options I thought worth considering, and promptly ordered some of each.
The yellows I ordered:
Cotton Couture in Citrus
Kona in Bright Idea
Kona in Citrus
And the grays:
Kona in Overcast
Cotton Couture in Pewter
For Illuminating, it was a surprising but obvious choice among the fabrics I'd ordered. Though I had anticipated one of the Citruses winning out, it was actually Kona Bright Idea.
And for Ultimate Gray, it was a challenge, as both Overcast and Pewter are REALLY good choices. By themselves, you can see they are different, but when each were put next to the color card, they both looked like very close matches. In fact, standing together in good natural light, at first hubby chose the Pewter, and I chose the Overcast. But after considering again and again on different days, I also choose Cotton Couture Pewter, though Kona Overcast (a personal favorite) would indeed be a very close choice.
So.... there you go! Not a scientific experiment in the least, but those are my choices for this year's colors of the year. Now to think up a project....
