 |
| What IS mauve? |
I haven't had much time to play with fabric over the last week, but I am trying to catch up on the 15-Minutes Play color challenges that have been going on for over a month. I'd already done peach and ochre, and today I made a block with bright yellow. The two I haven't done yet are avocado and mauve. So, I think I know what avocado is, and have got fabric for that block. But what is mauve?
I mean, what IS mauve?
Everybody seems to have their own idea about what mauve really is, and you can see that just by looking at the images that pop up with a google search. I, too, have a hard time putting my finger on exactly what color it is. Is it pink? Purple? Brown? The best description I've been able to figure out is: it's a hideous color, and nobody can really say what it is, so they call it mauve.
 |
| I've got a couple purples, but I don't think of them as mauve. |
Hideousness is what makes it such a great challenge. It's like the idea of making a quilt out of double-knit polyester - cringe-worthy, humorous, and a really good mind-bender. How will I make mauve look good? Maybe an even better question is how will I find a bona fide mauve colored fabric in 2012? Luckily, my friend Siobhan from Georgia is sending me some scraps, and there's some mauve in the bag. The only condition is she never wants to see the bag of scraps again. LOL! That's perfectly fine with me.
I think I might be on to something here. Anyone else cleaning out their sewing rooms and getting rid of scraps?
Just for that I'm going to add a bit of black millennium fabric to the bag....
ReplyDeleteWhat is that?
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting question and thought!~ Hummmmm~ ♥♥♥
ReplyDeleteNoooo, I want the millenium fabric! Bill, (think of 1876 commemorative fabric redone in 2000). For pics check out pages 194-96 in "Dating Fabrics 2" -Trestain's second book of fabrics by eras. Vol. 2 covers 1950-2000. Both books are essential references for appraisers.
ReplyDeleteFactoid... In 1856, while trying to synthesize artificial quinine, 18-year-old chemistry student William Perkin instead produced a murky residue. Fifty years later, he described the event: he "was about to throw a certain residue away when I thought it might be interesting. The solution of it resulted in a strangely beautiful color." Perkin had stumbled across the world's first aniline dye, a color that became known as mauve.
ReplyDeleteI always think of it as pink or lilac with a hint of gray.
BTW, that quote came from a review of:
ReplyDeleteMauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World by Simon Garfield published in 2002
My DIL wants a baby sweater for the baby she's expecting knit in periwinkle. I sent her a photo of some yarn I wanted to use and thought was periwinkle but, while she liked the yarn, it wasn't what she thought was periwinkle. She thought it was close to indigo (which I thought was more of a dark blue than purple). I'm still working on it. And good idea to use Google image to see what comes up. Thanks for that!
ReplyDelete