Colour My World Orange

From wikipedia.org

I can't believe I forgot to do the intro to orange. Well, better late than never! This month's Colour My World challenge colour is orange. What a more perfect colour to explore as we head into Fall (at least in the northern atmosphere). The leaves are already starting to turn here. Lovely!

Orange is a really interesting colour. The real question about orange is, which came first -- the colour or the fruit? Well, according to Mental Floss, where "knowledge junkies get their fix", the fruit came first. Before the word orange was introduced to the English-speaking world, the colour was referred to as some Old English word (ġeolurēad) for yellow-red. Aren't you glad the word orange came along from Old French/Sanskrit/Dravidian languages? According to Wikipedia, there's also no true rhyme for orange in the English language. Go ahead, give it a try...

From http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool
/Astro/moon/moonorange/

Orange is the complimentary colour of blue and as such is highly visible against a clear sky. Makes sense that safety orange is often used in clothing and objects that need to be highly visible, such as safety equipment and signs, eh? As unflattering as it is for most of us to wear, prisoners are often dressed in orange clothing to make them easier to see if they try to escape. Sucks to be them!

Orange is also an energizing colour and stimulates the senses. According to Dream Moods, orange denotes hope, friendliness, courtesy, generosity, liveliness, sociability, and an out-going nature. If you drive an orange car, you are fun-loving, talkative, fickle, and trendy. And did you know that San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge is actually painted a Deluxe International orange, not red?

Interestingly, orange represents the sin of gluttony. It's also the name and colour of the Orange Order. And I'm sure few can forget the tragic consequences of using Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Have you seen Annoying Orange? It's aptly named.

Orange is also used positively throughout the world though. Orange is one of the colours to denote Thanksgiving and Halloween in North America. It's one of the colours of the New Democratic Party here in Canada.

Orange is the colour for Thursday on the Thai solar calendar in Thailand. Anyone may wear orange on Thursday and anyone born on a Thursday may adopt orange as their colour.
Saffron, red and white have always been the most prominent colours of Hinduism and have been regularly worn, particularly in religious ceremonies, in India for more than 2000 years.

Orange is also the national colour of the Netherlands. The Dutch royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau, gets its name from it's former holding in the south of France, the principality of Orange. The title Prince of Orange is still refers to the Dutch heir.

From Wikipedia.org

"The Gates", an enviromental art exhibit by artist Christo and his wife Jeanne Claude, debuted in New York City's Central Park in 2005. It contained 7503 orange-coloured fabric panels throughout the park.

If you'd like to do some more reading on this colour, here are a few resources for the colour orange:

• National Geographic's Lightbox and Life In Orange - gorgeous photos with orange as the dominant colour
• Sensational Color
• Some orange colour schemes from Color Combos

I used to hate orange. What a brash colour, I thought. It's definitely grown on me over the last year or so though and I'm looking forward to this month's challenge and getting know this colour better.

What would you do with this colour? What does this colour make you think of -- leaves, pumpkins, oranges, safety signs, tiger lillies, tigers? If you'd like to participate in this challenge, I'll be putting up the linky party on Sunday, September 30 and will leave it open for the rest of the year.

See you on the quilt side,
M-R