What Color is Christmas?

These are the colors of Christmas right? Red, Green, a bit of gold metallic?

For dress-up our mothers would have chosen something like this red and green plaid taffeta.

Or if we were feeling funky, we might have seen this flannel with a more woodsy color of green find its way into holiday decor?

So why am I so drawn to the color combinations in this non-traditional holiday collection?

This set me to thinking about colorways and how they change over time. What was once modern is now old fashioned. Even the term colorway didn’t enter our lexicon until the 1950s.

Here’s another collection I picked up recently. Notice the lime green and aqua that has worked its way into our holiday palette.

Even hot pink is represented, and the colors and the designs are playful and fun.

I’m still seeing familiar themes like these decorated trees, but my attraction to these colors is leading me in a whole new direction as I think about holiday decorations and gifts this year.

I’m also having had a love affair with cotton crochet thread lately, and joy of joys, Royal makes it in these wonderful not-Christmas colors.

I just couldn’t stop. I made four sets of four coasters, a hot pad, a basket to hold them all, and I still had more thread.

So I made a cute table scarf…

and I still have this much…

I’m thinking I need a lace shawl to wear to holiday parties in 2011. Or perhaps just to have my head examined for stashing in so many different craft areas – fabric, thread, yarn.

Oh well. At least the colors coordinate. And maybe I’ll use that non-Christmas fabric stash to make some new table linens for our Christmas party. I realize we just celebrated the 4^th of July, but THE holiday does sneak up on me, so I’d better start planning now. And after digging through the stash for all my holiday fabrics, I have lots of ideas. More to come…