A thing about the colour purple

It all started with an email. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a lady, who has since moved from our li'l town in search of warmer climes, requesting if I had any quilts for sale. Apparently, her daughter is getting married in September and the lady wanted to know if I had any hexagon beauties that I would unload sell for a unique wedding present.

Well......yes...my gloriously coloured, purple, satin-backed bohemian inspired, hexie is for sale (though another lady had visited our li'l ole abode a couple of weeks ago to have a bo peep at it....and is still toing and froing as to whether she will part with her hard earned moolah and take it home with her); and a beautiful pastel coloured hexie, just waiting to leave the confines of my humble abode and go and abide somewhere else.

But....no...the daughter hates, simply deplores the colour purple!!! What!!! Hates the colour purple....unthinkable!!! Indeed....purple throughout the ages has been associated with royalty, power and wealth!! Though each hexie in this quilt is backed with a purple satin, each hexie sings a rhapsodic, rainbow-inspired melody. This hexie is a song of riotous colour! Mmm...how on earth can I part with this beauty?

And....no.....the pastel hexie quilt wouldn't have a chance of staying clean and pure in the daughter's home. It seems to me that both my hexies may be sitting a li'l while longer in our humble abode.

So I will have to stitch another HUGE hexie; but this one will be 'simple' with hardly any embellishments. Of course I will have to handcuff my hands so that they won't be tempted to add a li'l fancy button here and a li'l ribbon, floral pretty there......but I will be strong. I suppose, 'tis good news......just means this hexie will take less time to stitch.

When I enquired as to what colours the daughter would love in a quilt, the mother answered, "oh I don't know.......anything will do"!!! Now, as we all know, just anything will most certainly not do. We all have our particular likes and dislikes when the subject of colour is involved. We all have a penchant for certain colours and though there are some who are happy with whatever, most of us are not. For most of us, there are colours that we just cannot live with.

And....just to add pressure and a li'l fire to the quilting cauldron, the daughter works for a well known designer!! No pressure.......no pressure at all.

So, after a lot of  questions and donning my psychologist hat, trying to ascertain what colours makes the daughter's heart sing, I discovered that she loves bold colours; reds, teals, pinks, greens, black, blues, oranges, yellows...... and as she is an arty farty type loves a plethora of fabrics. Though I have a few sumptuous fabrics stored away I needed to  purchase some more.

Of course Tassie can be a bit light on in the sumptuous designer-ish fabric department, so li'l ole me had to visit Spotlight to see if there was anything suitable for this hexie. I hate that Spotlight is my only choice of fabric shops here in this li'l part of the world. The whole experience of searching for fabric in Spotlight is rather akin to an archaeological dig; where one scrounges and burrows under hundreds of bolts of fabric to unearth the fabric of choice, with the possibility of being entombed forever more by toppling bolts of fabric! It can be exhausting and rather arduous on the back; and after lugging the chosen bolts to the counter, one has the bearing of Quasimodo!!

Of course I could visit places on-line but I need to touch the fabric, I need to see see the quality of the fabric and decide whether it would be suitable for my new hexie. And.....of course.....the fabrics from the likes of Tessutis (one of my fave fabric stores in Sydney) or similar gorgeous stores are a li'l too expensive.....after all I do want to make a li'l 'doh-ray-me' for all my efforts.

So after a lot of toing and froing over fabrics, 'will she like this, will she like that'.....(it is so very difficult, when choosing for someone whom you do not know) I have come up with these fabrics. Each of the hexagons will be backed with a black satin. Oh no......those of you who have read my other posts telling the sad and sorry tale of making the odd hexagon quilt or two, will know that I hate stitching with satin. Satin has an inbuilt DNA which will not play at all nicely...it slips and slides everywhere. 'Tis a pity that the lady didn't want a lovely 100% cotton pieced quilt. That would have been sooooo easy!!

As I only have three months to stitch this hexie I intend to stitch a little each day...(well...that's the plan; and we all know how plans go belly-up...don't we). This quilt is going to be more like a bedspread, with the sides just touching the floor. Huge....and as with all my other hexies, this quilt will be all hand stitched (excepting of course machine stitching each fabric hexie to the batting)....so I had better get a move on.... I had better skiddoo out of here!!

Toodlepips for now......I am off to enter the world of hexies once again.

Happy Stitching !!