4 Stories: Color.

I’m joining in on the 4 Stories Series started by Leigh-Ann at Freckled Nest!

1. Favorite.
My favorite color is yellow! I love bright colors and I love to stand out in a crowd, so yellow is a good companion in that regard. People that know me well know that yellow is like my trademark: last year for my birthday, Josh searched high and low for a yellow wallet for me and ended up getting me a gorgeous yellow Hobo clutch wallet that I absolutely loved, and my Auntie Jae made a quilt for me for my college graduation in which yellow was the primary color. Having so much yellow in my life is like a glaring ray of sunshine, which is a lot of times exactly what I need.

2. Hairs.
I’ve had several different hair colors since my teen years, from dark brown to platinum blonde, but one of the worst and most traumatic hair color experiences happened my freshman year of college. I was coming out of my high school emo phase (in which I had a quasi-mullet and a platinum blonde and deep burgundy combination), and had the bright idea to dye my hair back to my natural color, which is a dirty blonde. Mistake. I went to a really terrible hairdresser who, in her laziness, decided to dye my hair much darker than I wanted and then let it slowly fade to the color I actually wanted. Mistake. My hair, after being dyed, started out as kind of a medium auburn, which then faded into a strawberry blonde, which then faded into a duller strawberry blonde with a grey sheen. It was terrible. My mom tactfully but honestly characterized my hair color as “a color that doesn’t occur in nature,” and that was about the time I decided to dye my hair back to platinum blonde.

3. High School Mascot.
I went to high school in Battle Ground, Washington, (aka Hicktown USA) and our colors were black and orange because our mascot was a tiger. High school was super-stifling because I was a quirky, go-against-the-grain kind of girl in a place where blindly following the majority like sheep was the norm. Because of my negative experiences in high school, I’ve had really negative connotations of the color orange. For the past six or seven years, I wouldn’t wear orange or buy anything that was overtly orange because it reminded me of Battle Ground. I’m finally starting to get over this illogical aversion to orange and am beginning to realize that orange is actually a pretty awesome color, but it took me a long time to break the ties between the color orange and my memories of high school.

4. Mixing and Matching.
One of my favorite things about sewing is putting together visually striking color combinations. I love the effect of unexpected pairings of color: bright blues and yellows, pale oranges and pinks, busy multi-colored prints with bold black-and-white patterns. And as long as mixing and matching colors is a challenge and a reward when I do it right, I will continue sewing and making things, and love it, to boot.