Periwinkle Color and Quilt

So tell me, do you see this color as purple or blue?   Pantones 2022 color of the year is Very Peri. For years I've  waited anxiously for the release of the color of the year.  Why?  It plays absolutely no role in my quilting path for the year.  I'm still going to play in my favorite bright and happy color pallet regardless of the color trends for the year.  Very rarely does this color of the year effect my wardrobe options.  I mean seriously t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans and flannel shirts pretty much stay the same from year to year.  Well, blue jeans change a little but they basically change the leg, waist and pocket styles and that's about all they can do.  I try to stay as 1980's as possible. So why is this so exciting to me every year.  I guess it's because I color my world everyday and I hope that every once in awhile they will actually let this old grannie feel like she's trendy and hip.

The color Periwinkle is beautiful, but what color is it really?  Pairing it with the wrong shades or colors is so easy to do.  I see it as a shade of purple.  But put it next to a blue and by golly gosh that periwinkle will look like purple.  Pair it up with purples and it turns blue.  It's the craziest thing. 

Do I have periwinkle fabric in my stash?  You better believe it!  Do I use it?  NOPE.  I have used it in one quilt, I think.  So here's my pull for the color periwinkle.  All of these fabrics are Lakehouse Drygoods prints. The picture makes them look more blue than purple.  The only reason I have them in my stash is because they are Lakehouse.

So lets look at them on top of the Very Peri.  Not one of them is the exact same color.  But they do fall into the peri color pallet if you look at the pantone post about Very Peri.  You can find it here https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-2022-tools-for-designers  What I really found interesting was the colors they chose as complimentary colors. Not what I would have or would ever use.  Maybe I'm a little bias, but I think Pam and Holly did a pretty good job adding pops of color to these periwinkle fabrics.

Have you ever seen a real periwinkle flower?   They always look blue to me.  Take a look at the image below.   It looks blue to me until I really start looking at the flower.  There's shades of purple on certain parts but it looks to me as if shadows are causing the purple color.  Does it matter?  Well no.  I just find it very interesting how this color is so strange.  The outer square is the same square as the image above, I just put a different image on top. When I look at the image above I see purple, the one below I see more of a bright slate blue.  The first picture, the paint splat, was made from the same square and it looks like a deeper purple to me.  

Okay now that we have talk about the color Periwinkle, let's take a look at the quilt pattern Periwinkle.  Below is one I made back in 2014 and never quilted.  I used a free pattern at the time but now she charges a small fee for the pattern. You can find it here.  She calls the block Hummingbird and it finishes at five inches.  It's paper pieced.  I don't like paper piecing so I did the paperless paper piecing method that you can find here.  It's not the tutorial I used but it's the same process.  I've heard this block called so many things over the years.

1. Periwinkle

2. Job's Tears 

3. Job's Troubles

4.  Arkansas Star

5. Kite

6. Snowball

I thought it was called The Kite Quilt because I had seen it in a magazine years ago.  When I made mine I felt like it looked like none of the above mentioned names. I thought it looked more like a twinkling star so my quilt was named

Pocket Full Of Starlight

Some of you are probably already singing the song.   

🎵Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day.  Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket never let it fade away🎵 ... BLAH BLAH BLAH.... and then it says....

You'll have a Pocket  Full of Starlight

There's many blocks with several names.  What I have found is it's right but not right most of the time.  Way back when these quilt blocks were designed and given names the pieces and the color placement would make the block different so they would call them different names.  Example of a simple block with different names would be a nine patch.  But change the color placement and it becomes a cross block.

After years of wondering which name is correct, today I'm going find the answer with a little research in the best quilt block reference book available.  The newest edition of the Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.   Does it really matter which name is correct?  Nope, not all.  Enquiring minds want to know!  Today we designers will take a traditional pattern, use a specific line of fabric and maybe reverse the back ground to color and the block to white then give the quilt a fancy name.  Or like me and my quilt above, my color is in the same spot I just didn't like any of the suggested names so I changed it to suit me.

Below is what I found.  I won't bore you with more chit-chat, the images speak for themselves.  But pay attention to how many pieces in a block, the shape of the pieces, set on point or not.  Some are very similar but the star points are stretched. And some are not even in the same ballpark.

I think my quilt is a version of The Mill and Stars in the above image.  My color placement is different and my block was only one star. It also lacks the secondary pinwheel made when putting the star units side by side.   The quilters who designed these blocks had no idea at the time they were making history they just thought they were making quilts.