New Orleans House Project

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Purple Houses in the Crescent City

New Orleans and the color purple go together like needle and thread.  We've venerated purple for years as one of the colors of Mardi Gras, along with green and gold.  According to Mardi Gras lore, purple represents Justice.  Be that as it may, purple is near and dear to the hearts of New Orleanians.   So much so it is not unusual to find purple houses in our fair city!

This is a great example of what New Orleanians call "K & B" purple.  A now defunct local drugstore chain used a certain shade of purple to promote their stores.  The signage was purple, the cash registers were purple, their store brands featured purple and their employees wore purple!  We miss them, and proudly wear K & B purple T-shirts in their memory.

So, it didn't take a great leap of faith to follow Sheila's inspiration and make some scrappy purple house blocks.  Sheila pointed me to Bonnie Hunter's pattern and mentioned how easy and fun the blocks were to make.  After one block, I was smitten!

Before long I had 4 purple houses and was envisioning a wall hanging with purple swag borders! 

Although I'm way late on posting this week, do stop by Soscrappy's blog for more purple inspiration.  One week left for all the lovers of scrappy purple!