The Color Purple

I am in a block swap and July is my month to decide what kind of block I want the other members to make. After looking at swap blocks from other bees and changing my mind from day to day, I finally chose a variation of Red Pepper Quilts' scrappy quilt.

Instead of scrappy, I have decided to go with a "color wheel" theme. Each member of the swap picked a color, and going out in the mail today is a 6 1/2" square of white Kona cotton and a little stack of ten tone-on-tone prints in a specific color, and each person is encouraged to add some fabric from her own stash. (Yep, two people picked orange--hooray!)

I had made a sample block in purple, which I then tried to photograph. It turned out to be really difficult to get a true representation of purple. It kept photographing as blue. I'm sure it had to be fabric, not the photographer. So then I tried playing with the white balance settings on my camera. These are the crummy pictures I came up with.

I finally did something I hardly ever do: photograph with the flash on. Whew. The white really got bleached out, but the purple looks a little better.

I'm pretty happy with the block and I think the quilt will be awesome.

But is there someone out there with photography hints?