Saturday, April 05, 2014

The Color Purple and Fabric Storage

I've always thought of purple as a generic term for colors made from a mixture of non-specific proportions of red and blue. But this morning, when I read that the designated color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge was purple, I wondered if I'd been walking around with a misconception and that it meant something more specific.

In the traditional Boutet color circle (1708) that I found on Wikipedia, purple is shown between crimson and violet.

Wikipedia also contains some interesting history and associations of the color purple and is the source of some interesting factoids about the color.
For example, the French call the color on this shield "pourpre" (purple).  French and German purple contains more red and less blue than American or British purple.

Who knew?  Purple is not only NOT a generic reference, but it can mean different colors in different parts of the world?

For my purposes, I decided to hold onto my misconception and regard it a a general reference to those colors between blue and red. At my house, my stash is stored, by color, in these no-longer-available, stackable bins from The Container Store.  Small scraps are also stored by color, in recycled plastic containers in which lettuce and spinach are sold. Here are my "purples," along with some pink scraps.


As you can see, sorting by color and folding to fit is as far as I go with my fabric organizations.  When you look in the bins, large or small, there's a mish-mash of color and print in no particular order.

Today, when I pulled out the purple bins, I wondered if maybe I shouldn't sort them a bit each month, as part of the RSC.  But instead I made a scrappy purple Oak Leaf block for April. Now, there are four.

Four Scrappy Oak Leaf Blocks

I'm joining the first purple party for Scrap Happy Saturday and the Let's Blog About Fabric list on the Block Lotto and asking you ... how are your fabrics organized and how organized are your fabrics? 

11 comments:

Sheila said...

Great blocks. I store my fabrics on a book shelf and my scraps in card board boxes by color.

Karen said...

I like your leaf blocks. I wish as organized as you.

Lisa said...

I love purple in all its nuances but I often get stuck on what other people mean by purple - redder or bluer. Now you've got me really interested in doing some more reading about this.

Your blocks are really beautiful and they will make a stunning quilt

Nell's Quilts said...

I love that purple has so many different interpretations. I'm not sure if I like the cool or warm purples better.

Marly said...

Your purple oak leaf is very pretty.
Thanks for the purple story. I was brought up in the UK and now live in the Netherlands. For me purple is what Dutch people call bluish purple (German influence according to your story) and what I call mauve they refer to as reddish purple! This is very strange as Mauve was a nineteenth century Dutch painter famous for scenes of heathland, predominantly heather. I find it strange because he influenced the English language, but not his own.

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

OMG!!! You can organize fabric???? I had no idea!!!!

Kathy S. said...

I almost always choose making a block or two over sorting scraps. It has to be done, but not always as fun. Have a great day!

Wendy said...

I do love your blocks. I always think of purple as between red and blue too, and as I have very few scraps, that's what I'll be doing for RSC. I am sorting out my scraps each month, it's very satisfying!

Sheri said...

I enjoyed seeing your fabric storage method and I've been disconcerted about the color purple because the red purples should go perfectly with the blue purples and they just don't sometimes! I liked reading about purple here.

Anonymous said...

Fun info. Your feather looks purples to me.

Deb A said...

I did not know that about the color purple! I have my fabrics on shelves in the closet by color... but they are just thrown in there. I also have a huge rubbermaid bin (or three!) of all the extra bits that is not sorted. I really should try and organize it up a bit... but prefer to sew!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...