I spent the morning running around in 0F weather with two toddlers in tow, effectively wearing both them (they are successfully napping for the first time in weeks! YIPPEE!) and myself out.

While I should be in the basement working on one of my many DIY projects I have on the go or hey, how about sewing something?, I decided I should try to get warm (I have been home an hour and I still can’t feel my hands) and answer a few emails and start planning my next quilt project.

This project will be a solids-only one, so I’ve been having fun playing around with some color palettes. I have really been drawn to navy lately, and since I hope to pad out this quilt to be a king sized for our master bedroom (resolution 1 for 2017: for heaven sakes, sew something, anything, for yourself, woman!). Off to Pinterest I went – (I even have a board specifically for color palette pinning, heehee):

…and again, really drawn to navy – and mostly drawn to the rich, saturated colors that accompany it in a lot of the palettes I found:

images courtesy of In color balance and Design Seeds, as watermarked

I’m really leaning toward the bottom left palette and the top left. What are your thoughts?

How do you decide on colors for your quilts, especially when you’re only working with solids and no prints to ‘go off of’ for starting points or inspiration?

So, I'm going to preface this post with this:

...this is not a rant, per se, but an observation I've made and been quite hypersensitive to as I try to work more on 'rainbow' type projects... bear with me... feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments below, I'd love to hear them...

Okay.

image courtesy of Sweet & Lovely Life

Purples are pretty colors, no? I mean, I don't personally use a lot of them in my quilts, but I've been trying to expand and step out of my comfort zone with respect to palettes, and I really have found that I like purple.

I never really gave the color much thought before;  I'll be honest. It was never on my radar.

But then I started working with a lot more solids in my quilts (primarily, I'd say) and as I did, and started to play more with colors, shades and hues, I began to realize something.

The world of solid fabrics is seriously lacking in the purples department.

image courtesy of Caldwell Carpets

Here's an example:
Robert Kaufman's line of Kona brand solids had, up until their new launch of their 32 new colors, only 14 distinguishable purples* - i.e. - those that couldn't be mistaken for another color (you know, the ones you look at and think "is that purple, or pink/burgundy/blue?", etc.)

As a comparison, the same line has 35 distinguishable blues.

Poor purple.

image courtesy of Fashion Telegraph

To RK's defense, out of the 32 new colors this season, 5 of them are purples. Not bad!

But then I got to looking at my scrap bins.

My purple bin is nearly empty. It makes it tough when I'm making a scrappy something-or-other, and it just shouts out for a bit of regal-ness.

And then I look at my stash piles of purple prints. Another sad state of affairs.

So what is it about the color purple? It seems to be a pretty versatile color, since its hues range from on the red-side to on the blue-side. You'd think it'd be an easy-ish color to incorporate in a quilt.

I just wonder if:

1. I'm just not attracted to lines of fabrics which have purple prints in them
2. Purple is just not a popular color for designers to incorporate into their fabric lines
3. Purple isn't an attractive enough color to use as quilters/sewists.

Thoughts?

*Footnote: this obviously, is open to interpretation. What you might call blue, I might call purple. I tried to be as critical as possible when determining these numbers.