The Hunt for Red Orange: one woman's attempt to pass her colour wheel assignment and not spoon out her eyeballs

My first assignment in my interior decorating class is due this Wednesday. We have to build a colour wheel out of scraps of fabric. Easy peasy, right? Go to Michaels or favourite fabric store, collect a rainbow and glue down onto a presentation board. Insert maniacal laugh here.

My mom dug up I had some scraps of felt in red, yellow and orange and a random piece of red-purple. In class last week were were permitted to beg, borrow and trade with each other to complete our collections. I scored some green, blue, blue-green, yellow-green and yellow-orange from my classmates, meaning I left that night only missing the blue-purple and the red-orange.

On the weekend I visited Michaels and found a square of felt in the blue-purple, and found a pair of magic gloves in the red-orange. So I thought. In the store the gloves were red-orange, in nature they were just red. I was literally, seeing red.

Tonight I searched my house and my parents' house for red-orange anything. A towel they wouldn't miss? Old shirt? Even a paper napkin would have satisfied me.  Every time I found something that might work I'd place it in the wheel and it would look like just plain, regular orange.

You would think a girl who drives an orange truck, (it had to be orange) would know the colour. And actually, looking at it tonight I mused that it might pass the bill for red-orange, but there is no way I was going to cut a 2-inch circle out of a quarter panel of my sweet ride.

Just before leaving my mom's and dad's I came across a Clinique makeup bag--the kind you get for "free", filled with samples as a bonus gift with your $26.50 or more purchase. The outside had a strong candidate for the colour and the inside lining had another solid option. I think I might have all the pieces now, just have to put them together in a presentable fashion.

I am trying to keep in perspective that I am doing this class to actually learn, not just to get through the assignments and tests. So today I learned that red-orange is a tricky colour that has the strength to drive me mad.

The hallway from the hotel in The Shining

REDRUM, REDRUM!