Color me pink

While surfing blogdom the other day I saw another quilter's post about her favorite color -- pink. It made me think about my own relationship with pink. If you had asked me three years ago if I liked the color -- I would have looked at you and said "do I LOOK like a pink person"? Which is odd, since as a child, it was my absolute favorite color and I even convinced my parents to paint my room hot pink. Then my dear friend became pregnant and had a little girl. Ok, girls get pink right? I have some pink fabric hanging around in the stash -- and being a contentious godmother -- I need to make my godchild a quilt. Let's forget for a minute that said godchild's mother is also a quilter. So -- some pink fabric is not enough for a quilt so I'll just buy pink fabric -- mini-challenge to myself to make a quilt entirely of one color -- and I will buy the fabric at random, not trying to "match" it, just keep buying until I feel it's ready. The only rule for the purchases is that the fabric has to say "pink" to me -- in other words, be the primary color. I figured that I would either end up with a cute and quirky pink quilt -- or the world's ugliest quilt.

Yards and yards of pink fabric later -- I decided to take the plunge. By this time, I was pregnant and my goddaughter was almost six months old. Turns out, I had purchased enough fabric for two quilt tops (did I mention I tend to overbuy fabric?). I still didn't know if I was going to have a boy or a girl, but hey -- the second one could always be a charity quilt. By the time the top was together, I knew I was having a girl as well. Because of my dislike of the color, and because of my own "rules" for making the quilt -- "Puke me up Pink I" and "II" were born. One for my goddaughter, and one for my own daughter. What you see here is "Pink I" -- my goddaughter has hers across the country and I don't actually have a photo of it finished.

A funny thing happened when I was working on it though -- I rediscovered how much I actually LIKED pink. Working with all of the bubblegum colors and hot vibrant fuchsias made me remember how happy they made me -- and what they reminded me of. Pink peeps with the gooey marshmallow. My first pair of Nike's which were baby pink with a white swoosh. My room as a child with hot pink and lime green wallpaper with white cartoon bunnies everywhere. The pink and white shag carpeting in my room. Plucking fresh raspberries off of the bushes in the backyard and eating them while they were still warm from the sun. Something else happened too -- since the two pinks, almost every quilt I have made since then has had pink in it. What started out as a project to use up every scrap of pink in my stash, has now created a whole pink section of my stash that has threatened to take over every other color.

I'm glad I rediscovered a former favorite, but I wonder if I'm the only one this has happened to? Are there colors that you don't like/can't stand and then working with them helps you appreciate them? Or is this just a strange quirk of my own?