Saturday, April 30, 2016

April Circles for Quilty 365

It reigned purple in my sewing room in April.  That was the plan and color I'd chosen for the month for my Quilty 365 circle project.

Three weeks in, there was the sad news of Prince's departure from this world.  His music was part of the soundtrack of my life.  "Raspberry Beret" and "Let's Go Crazy" were among my favorites, but there were so many more.  His talent, vision, musicianship, creative genius, and supreme funkiness will be sorely missed.   
"If you don't like
the world you're livin' in
Take a look around
at least you got friends..."

Back to the circles, it took some creativity to come up with 30 purple dots.  Purple is one of those colors I don't tend to have a lot of in the stash, but since I'm a saver of scraps and strings, I managed to scrounge up enough to cobble together.


Back in the '90s, I decided to paint a bathroom a lovely shade of lilac.  Afterwards, when shopping for towels and rugs, I found out how hard it was to match purple.  Too gray, too bright, too blue, too dark, too grapey.  I finally went with tan/cream accessories.


Which happens to be my background square color scheme, so we're good.  Perhaps the point of purple is to defy the whole matching thing.  Mess with attempts to pin it down.  Just when you think it's this, it's that.  I admire that rebel quality.


So we have grayish purples, muddy purples, happy purples, sad purples, grapey, spring-fresh, and quirky purples.  And so on.

Another fun factoid about my experience with purple.  Once in a while, I'll get a whiff of something—a flower, a piece of candy—and I'll say, "It smells like purple."  I didn't know this was kind of weird until my husband commented that he didn't understand what I was talking about.  What does purple smell like?  Well, not like grape, as one might imagine.  More like a certain clover, which is also the same (in my mind) as what purple gumdrops tasted like in my childhood.  Later in life, I found out this may be a form of synesthesia.  I do have number form synesthesia, when it comes to visualizing calendars and timelines, but there are other types as well.  

I don't smell other colors, as a rule.  I think it'd be really cool, though, if I did.  In a fabric store, would the smells all blend together?  If so, would it smell like brown?  And as I'm thinking about what brown would smell like, I'm remembering the modeling clay from my childhood.  I spent a lot of time with my nose within a few inches of modeling clay as a kid.  Not Play-Doh; for some reason, I just wanted to eat that stuff.  Modeling clay came in sticks wrapped in cellophane.  There were a few basic colors in a pack, but after a while, they all got mixed together forming a big hunk of brown.


But enough about my childhood eccentricities.  Who knows, maybe my brain got rewired when as a tot I stuck the silver butter knife in the electrical socket and woke up several feet away seeing stars.  And I do remember those purple stars!

With January's blue circles, February's red/pink, March's green, and April's purple, that brings me to a total of 121.

Linking to:  Quilty Folk

Friday, April 1, 2016

March Circles for Quilty 365

Last month, my color was green for the Quilty 365 circle project.  Oh, how I love green!  It is a welcome sight this time of year, as the snow melts and rain begins transforming a dull brown to a verdant landscape.

Spring seems to have come a bit earlier than usual.  My daffodils are up about six inches and many trees are budding.  I worry that a cold snap will set things back, but overall, no complaints here.

March's green circles, along with January's blue and February's red/pink, make a total of 91 so far.

Haven't thought too much yet about how they're going to go together in a quilt.  I am enjoying seeing how others have done it or how they're thinking about it. 

April's circles will be purple.  I'm already finding it challenging to capture true shades of purple in photographs.  Other than that minor detail, I predict nothing but more fun ahead!

Linking to:  Quilty 365