Thinking ahead for Spring and when we will have our newborn ruling the roost, I have been making a few things for the children now so that they can wear them later.

Blue, while I know this will not be popular to admit, is one of my least favorite colors.  My Gran, who took care of me when I was a little girl, was chic in a stark sort of way, and her home was decorated in three colors: black, white, and blue.  She had a collection of Willow Wood china, and she counted blue as her most favorite color.

Gran had been a very beautiful young woman with auburn hair and blue-green-gray eyes, and I can just imagine her stepping out in her tailored blue clothing and looking smashing.  She disdained pink (“Redheads should never wear pink,” she told me) until her hair turned white but still stuck to her lifelong color palette of neutrals and blues in what she wore and what she chose.

While I admired her taste level even as a child, there was something too cool about it all for me.  I loved pink then, of course, but it was something else.  People always describe blue as soothing, but it seems to me sort of lifeless and lackluster… well unless you’re talking about royal blue or turquoise.

In my early twenties I had a dream in which I was smashing all of that blue and white Willow Wood china, dashing it to the ground passionately.  In the dream my mother had asked me if I wanted it, and that was my response.  It was the symbol of a sort of WASPy coldness that existed in my maternal line.  Upon waking, I had to laugh to myself.  Um, nope.  I guess I did not want it.

Well, since then, while I do not gravitate toward blue in general, life has made me include it in ways that I did not count on.  My son’s eyes are blue, and he is really the one that has made me begin to love the color in my own way.  After all, it’s hard not to fall in love with the color of your child’s eyes when they are so clear and filled with wonder.

Liev’s favorite color, too, happens to be blue.  Light blue is first favorite and then all of the varying shades falling behind in line before his next favorite color, surprisingly, red.  He asks and begs for blue things, so of course I have had to change my feelings about the color and look at it with fresh, loving eyes.

Just recently, I made this cornflower blue dress, Oliver + S’s Jump Rope Dress, for Mira to wear with a long sleeve shirt underneath until the weather turns warm here in New York.  Hopefully it will last our little string bean through the Spring and Summer, till the baby has a few months under his or her belt and there might be a chance to find a moment here and there to sew again.

The whole time this little dress was in the works for Mira, my Gran and her love for all things blue kept popping into my head.  I still do not care to inherit the Willow Wood, but I am finding my way with the blues.

Probably these people don’t share my ambivalent relationship with Blue.  Take a peek at their blue worlds:

jane – ian – bonnie – joyce – kim –trinsch – francesca – state of bliss –isabelle – janis – kari – jgy – lise – cate –otli – dorte – sophie – mcgillicutty –sunnymama – daan – ibb – kelleyn –ninja – sammi – theresa – cherry b –cole – lucylaine – lynn – skywriting –anna – conny – l´atelier – rosamaría –victoria – yellow door – tikjewit –juniper – annabel – valerie – mlle paradis – wander chow – nadine – don– flowtops – susanna – tania – dana –tzivia – mezza – susan – ocean girl –svea