My mother has always loved the color orange. She has even been the proud owner of not one, but two orange cars. But I never took her love of orange seriously. After all, she was also a big fan of avocado green. When I was growing up, even our colander was avocado green. I’m sorry to say that a couple of years ago I broke that avocado green colander in an unfortunate pasta draining incident. Yes, it was an accident, but I digress.
This year, I’ve decided to work on my quilts seasonally. Let me clarify. Usually I try to work seasonally, but I tend to fall a bit behind and after just finishing a Valentine’s Day project two weeks ago (7 months late), I’ve vowed to finish my projects before the holiday or season arrives. So now that it’s October, I’m working on my first ever Halloween project and I am LOVING the color orange! Who knew! Orange has all of the happy qualities of yellow and then some. It pops next to purple, it sings next to green, and pair it with black and it instantly evokes Halloween. For a girl who usually quilts with muted reds and browns (think Kansas Troubles fabrics), orange has been a revelation.
That’s one of the things I love about quilting – it changes the way you look at the world. I decided to make a Halloween quilt and orange was the obvious choice. Because I’m a scrap quilter and one orange simply will not do, I get to shop for several shades of orange – yellow orange and red orange, pumpkin orange and rust. Then, of course, there is the fun of choosing fabrics to complement the original color, in this instance, I was drawn to black and purple (but not just one shade of purple…). Then it’s on to washing and pressing the fabrics and cutting them into small pieces. Before I assemble a single block, I’m intimately acquainted with a color and by the time I finish a project, I’m in love. 
So now that I’ve discovered the joys of orange, I’m seeing it everywhere – in pumpkins, mums, pine needles, and falling leaves. I’m imagining orange paired with blue, with red, and with yellow. My cutting table is littered with orange fabrics and the orange stack in my fabric closet has quadrupled in size. I’m a convert. Just don’t tell my mom.