2026 Mini-Pillow Stitch Along - Choosing Colours

2026 Mini-Pillow Stitch Along

Join me through 2026 as I stitch my own set of mini-pillows. I will be blogging regularly through the year and will be posting my colourway decisions and stitching progress in our private FB Group - Freda's Fancy Stitchers

Freda has finished her 

Join our community of stitchers on Facebook

The best part of a SAL is being part of a community of stitchers who are all working on the same thing!  When your join our private Freda’s Fancy Stitchers group on Facebook, you can get advice, encouragement and ideas for customizing your project as you are stitching.  (NOTE: to keep our FB group safe and secure, security questions must be answered prior to admittance).

Choosing colours and threads

First and foremost, there has never been a stitching law that says that you must stitch a design exactly as  written in the pattern!  BUT - you can if you want to!

When Freda got to the end of stitching on this whole design, she had used a total of about 57 threads and 7 different beads.  You may already have many of those threads, or something similar, are in your stash. Please use them!

Step 1 - Consider thread weights

In my stash, all my threads are sorted by weight. All of the pearl cotton #8 threads and any others that are approximately the same weight are in one bin. The same goes for pearl cottons #3 through #12. Six stranded floss, metallics and specialty threads are in other bins. 

The mini-pillow pattern project uses mainly pearl #5 and pearl #8 weights with the possibility of something finer or heavier.

Step 2 - Deciding on Colourway

Deciding on what colours to stitch a project can sometimes be a challenge, but then sometimes it just comes to you right away.  Consider your stash - do you have threads saved away that you really like, but don't have a project for?  What are your favourite colours?  Do you like bright colours, deep colours or pastel colours?  

You could work with fall colours, Christmas colours, spring colours, the colours as charted by Freda or any combination that makes you feel happy. Let your imagination run wild!

Freda chose two different colourways for her mini-pillows - Turquoise/Teal and Purple/Mauve.

I am going to go in another direction with the colourway for my pillows.  I have just a couple of the threads that Freda used - BUT, I do have a whole bunch of leftover partial skeins from prievious projects and a good number of threads that I have collected over the years, but never used.  I have a bin now (picture below) of all of these threads.   I'll start here first as I plan the January pillow.

Step 3 - Pulling Threads - Always Start with your Stash!

Next is to pull out any threads that would work in the colorway you have chosen.  Grab a basket and shop your stash!  Pull out anything that appeals to you!  That includes pearl cottons, specialty threads, and metallics.  Don't forget about beads to co-ordinate. 

After all that a trip to a favourite LNS might be necessary to find a few more threads that just can't be lived without.  Your project bag will have way more colours than you will end up using.

There will always be threads that are no longer available, or not easily available. Just choose something else that is similar.

If you haven’t used many specialty threads before, do try at least some. They really do put the WOW into a project.  A lot of different threads in this project because they are fun to use and there were a lot of leftovers in my stash. What is in your stash?

Step 4 - Putting it all together

Now, take everything you've collected and spread it out.  Take a look at the pattern and then decide which threads speak to you.  The nice thing about the mini-pillow project is that the design is small - and if you don't like something you've chosen, it's relatively easy to replace a thread.

Below is a picture of all of the threads I pulled laid out by colour.  I like what I see and might add a few more colours on the red/orange side.  I am wondering if the pillows I am going to stitch are going to be inspired more by monthly birthstones...  More to come on this!  

A note on the cost of threads

If cost of the threads is an issue, there are a number of things one can do to help mitigate!

• Plan to use more of the pearl cottons and fewer specialty threads.
• Use several strands of floss instead of other threads, but you would want to use a laying tool to make sure that the individual strands lie side by side. 
• Use up a skein of thread by using it in several places over the course of the whole project. 
• There are a lot of places in the mini-pillow project that have use very little of a particular thread  This is the perfect opportunity to use threads left over from other projects.
• Search for threads second-hand.  Over the years, the sale table at our guild meetings has been a wonderful place to source threads.  Stash sale events, Facebook Marketplace (including private groups) can also be a great place to find threads.

This is a really fun project with finishes all along the way.  Have lots of fun!

Yours in stitching, Lisa Kampel