In February, I described how I arrived at finding the sapphire colors I needed to design a scarf for the Chimneyville Weavers and Spinners Guild 45^th Anniversary celebration. I used Munsell 10 blue for the sapphire blue and Munsell 10 yellow for the sapphire yellow.

The scarf is off the loom and in the exhibit that the CWSG organized for our celebration. Here is a photo:

 

The two opponent colors – blue and yellow – with the twill lines make the scarf shimmer in the light as we can see from the photo.

Below are close-ups of the front and back of the scarf.

 

When researching what is considered the standard sapphire blue, I came across other sapphires with descriptors to distinguish them from the standard. Once I was settled on what I wanted to weave, I became curious how these different sapphires may look.

I found five other hues (Munsell’s terminology for color) that carry the sapphire name: deep sapphire blue, royal sapphire, cobalt sapphire, Pantone’s blue sapphire and one simply called sapphire by some, but dark cyan by others.

Just as in the standard sapphire blue, all these other sapphire hues have hex numbers which can be translated into the percentage of RBG out of 100% for each color. Two other parameters can also be calculated: the value and the saturation.

The value as used in the Munsell’s system – also known as lightness in computer graphics – represents how light or dark the color is, obtained by adding black or white; a value of 100% is pure white, 0% is pure black.

Saturation is similar in concept to Munsell’s chroma, how much of a given hue is present; this allows us to distinguish sky blue from navy blue.

It’s fun to see how these sapphire hues compare. Below are tables with the numerical information and squares of the hues for comparison (much of the information is from ColorHexa.com).

In it they categorized colors with names already in use at the time and matched them to the Munsell system when possible.

In 1956, Color, universal language and dictionary of names, by Kenneth Low Kelly, standardized colors as part of the National Bureau of Standards. The 1976 revision is available for purchase as a black and white reprint, but it has no color plates (!). However, it can be downloaded for free from the NBS with the original color plates as shown below.

Pantone arrived at its own system in 1963, which extends to many different materials, including shiny metallic colors. It is widely used in fashion and in the printing business.

With the arrival of computers, a way to determine the position of each color on a screen was needed; the RGB was standardized (sRGB). When the web arrived in the 1990s, programmers needed a better way to define colors across platforms. The hex system was introduced in 1996 with the first specification of the Cascading Style Sheet used by web programmers. It became the standard.

The hex 0F52BA (on a scale of 0 to 255) is the most widely accepted sapphire number.

I color-coded the hex number because each pair of digits represents a color in the system used for our computer screen, RGB. For the sapphire number, we have 15 Red, 83 Green and 186 blue, which I find easier to think in percentages: 6% of the red (of the total 100% possible red), 32% of the green and 73% blue.

From the hex number, we can find the equivalent color in other systems, for example the cyan, magenta, yellow and black, the colors of our printer cartridges. Pantone uses names which corresponds to hex numbers when possible (but not for the metallics, for example).

It was time to weave. I searched the internet for a yarn with the color sapphire with no luck. My friend Gio Chinchar had the same result.

Time to look at what available colors with known specifications can come close to sapphire.

Lunatic Fringe has yarns that follow the Munsell system. They also have cards for all their colors with information, including the hex number, the RGB number, the value and the Pantone number.

At this point I had looked at enough sapphire blue to think that Mansell Blue 10 could work. This is my favorite blue, and I have used it a lot.

The RGB percentages for the Munsell 10 blue are: 0% red, 31% green and 66% blue. It has a value of 70 (on a scale of 0 to 100), while Sapphire has a value of 60. All and all, not a bad match; 10 Blue has no red, but it has a higher value and thus a bit darker.

To contrast the 10 Blue, I wanted to use a yellow. Doing an after-image gave me a bright yellow. I thought the 10 Yellow would work, but I thought I should check it, especially since yellow sapphire has a hex number.

Here is the comparison:

Good match!

Finally, it was time to design the project, a scarf. I thought it may be fun to call it:

              Diamonds Sapphires are a girl’s best friend

This is the entire drawdown for the 8” scarf, no repeats. Lots of diamonds sapphires!

Scarf is still on the loom… stay tuned…..

Happy Weaving!