My Crayon-Filled Life

I've always been drawn to color. From the time I first opened a Crayon box, I drew my version of the world around me in primary colors.


When I was sewing quilts, I used a square piece of cardboard for a pattern, and then traced around bits of fabric with a #2 pencil. I sat many an hour cutting them all out with a quarter inch extra for seams.

Solids and patterns and everything in between. I used every color in the rainbow. And then I stitched them together and quilted them. 

I filled little embroidery boxes with shades of thread in every hue. I was very picky about how the shades of colors were stored. 

Whites, then beige. Yellow, then orange. Pink, then red. Blue, then purple, then green. Brown, then gray, then black. Always the same regimented and successive rows.

My sewing thread was lined up the same way. I loved categorical order.

I got a book and taught myself how to embroider. And then I embroidered the outside of flower petals I appliqued to give them definition.

 

My first home after high school was an old trailer, old and green and ugly as sin. I acquired a bright gold couch that I think came with it. 

My daughter and I lived there for several years. In a little trailer park with a fenced yard. 

I still remember the the canopy of trees overhead that helped cool the temperature in our little tin can home. 

That trailer wasn't much to write home about. 

But then I traded it in for another used trailer, a little larger, that served us until I married a college psychology instructor when I was 20 and my daughter was 3.  

Every home I've lived in since has been a cozy little haven that served as a canvas for my colorful outlook on life. 

Polka dots and checks and stripes were married together in cafe curtains for my windows and pillows for my furniture. 

Cafe curtains were predominant because I only knew how to sew a straight stitch and they were simple. (Remember I flunked Home Ec!)

I gathered little trinkets and linens to fill my nest. Then when I started making quilts, I spread those around as well. 

Books filled in the blanks and house plants softened the corners.

It was home, wherever I landed.

Decorating trends come and go. Burlap and neutrals and distressed furniture. 

Burlap made me sneeze. Neutrals bored me. And distressed furniture was just something I never gravitated to. 

I prefer smooth painted surfaces that become worn the old-fashioned way. 

But to each their own.

Over the years I've left many things behind. Changed directions and moved on. But wherever I live, it will always look like the inside of a Crayon box. 

I don't have a lot of money, but I am rich in the tapestry of colors I love. 

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