The swatches simply didn’t fit the end result. This was, afterall, supposed to be a happy time in their lives. So, why couldn’t she get in the spirit? She held the dull greens and grays to her belly, as if to show the growing bump the colors of the room she’d be occupying for the coming years. She held the colors up to the walls, again, and then sat them back on her belly as she slumped lazily into the delicate rocking chair. She muttered, then swore. Getting up, she peeked out through the slit in the blinds at the vibrant neighborhood she felt so isolated from. She felt dull. She felt plain. She felt ugly–and fat. She turned, almost violently, and ran down the stairs, grabbing her car keys and purse. Returning three hours later, she felt refreshed–renewed. She wore a dress and danced, painting the walls with the new yellow paint she’d recovered during her adventure. Stepping back, she felt satisfied, admiring the room and it’s current occupants. Her husband would hate the color. And, she could smile at that.
She held swatches of the most beautiful shades.
Her decision was final. Leave the wall white. Paint a rainbow from one end to another to connect her bedroom to the one she’s standing in, her baby’s bedroom.
Swatches, looks like watches. But with an S at the start. Which is interesting because I don’t actually know what this word means. So therefore I want to believe it’s a flying dinosaur.
Lewis Darsey
swatches are fun swatches are dumb I don’t know what a swatch is so what can I really say? I think it is a watch but what makes it a swatch I guess I wont know unless I google it which I doubt I will
kay
Samples looping color-coded swatches.
Keeping time with the click, click watches.
Phrases and clips wrapped in quick tip slips
Flickers on through the shine, shine hazes
No smoke. No toke. Cool joke. All fizz on a sleepy ki–
She awoke with a bell that ebbed out and then faded.
Swatches were what watches were in Vegas. At least back in ’09 or ’08 when my grandfather bought me mine. I hand lost it perhaps two years later, the feel of the steel band still is a phantom on my wrist. Some photographs of a younger, different me still wear that swatch.
Nicolas Kurzhit
am i going to spend my entire (Student) savings on a piece of plastic watch?
yes, sure it is comfortable but i rather buy something cheaper and has the same ffunction as a watch
whatever i am poor.
“You know, you’re very… colorful.” I try not to sound offensive with this observation, but Ida, being Ida, whips around.
“So, I like my patterns,” she sniffs, and then billows out her apron on the dining room table so I can see them all. The stripes and checks and pinks and yellows and reds and just the general brightness, all stitched together willy-nilly. “Can you see how it’s like art? A square from my rug, a square from a dish towel, a square from a quilt, a square from a cover I was gonna sew for my couch but ran outta fabric. It tells a story.
“And,” she adds, smoothing it down again and giving me one last withering glare over her shoulder, “it’s damn pretty, too.”
I sigh as she heads back into the kitchen. It’s hard to argue with that woman.
being the poor kid i am, i can’t afford to buy self a collection of swatches. the money that i have is only capable of giving me a few tricycle rides and small box of ice cream. i am wearing this worn out casio watch. pretty good for me
goderichzins
Swatches. I love paint swatches. Color swatches. They make me love my job.
I looked upon my swatches, which colour would I use. There were so many, blue base, red, yellow. And I thought, how simple colours reflect us so well. I turned off the computer and left.
Cali
The swatches of colors hung on the wall, battered by the disagreement in the room. It was petty for their first fight to be over paint color, but it set the tone for what was to come.
Carla
swatches. I owed several swatches before. Thin one, thick one, over-size one. Swatch. The trusted name. Watch. I dont have a watch. whatever.
Sasha
I stared at the paint swatches, trying to pick a colour, even a group of colours. Anything that would make this process easier. But I had no idea. Did it matter if I chose blue, yellow, green, pink? Would he care? Would he be around long enough to form an opinion? Really I was doing this for me, try as I might to convince anyone otherwise. This was my project.
watches that are designer cool …. like swathes etc colourful and zany
airports and duty free… small and large… different styles reflect the character of the owner… that’s all
Jeremy
When I first think of swatches, I think of when I started a youtube channel about makeup… but now I’ve dumped that in my goal of living simply (no more stock piling makeup and focusing on material things). I also have this memory of my Mom from when I was little. She would buy me swatches when she took me with her on business trips, and I always felt super cool as a kid with a fancy watch… One of the few good memories with my Mom was picking one out with her every year in NYC.
Josie Marie
Little patches. Clothes mottled together like so many stitched memories. Cloaks of many colors adorning every motley fool they find. Guarding from the elements and containing within a storm of energy and wit. Swatches alone are naught but cloth, together they make my shirt, by troth.
She picked up the swatches of lace from the table and fingered through them. She had spent so much time wondering which pattern to use, but like all the other details she had fussed over in the past few months, it seemed totally irrelevant now. The wedding could wait.
All that mattered was that Jim recovered.
tonykeyesjapan
She’s like a punk rock Snow White. You’ve known her for so long you almost love her, not quite, because it’s something more than love. If that’s possible. Her smile is more intoxicating than any drug and damn, she’s kind of a bitch, but who isn’t nowadays. You want to spend your life with her. But you also want to slit her throat.
Taylor
I had a recollection of ideas and thoughts.
I couldn’t seem to gather a story from them.
They were meaningless.
Swatches of unknown material
waiting for my mind to create a story.
Yet, nothing seems to come out of these ideas.
Jeffrey Tamayo
a sample piece of cloth a small amount or number in a cluster, bunch or patch. But I think of swats which isn’t a nice thing to think about.
Her fingers were frail on the needles and shook more then previous years had allowed. The design was simplistically complex. One that only age and experience could have brought into this world. She looked down at her near complete work and at the urn sitting over the fireplace.
“This one’s for you Earl.”
She finished up the final stitch and put on her black dress.
Michael Thompson
There were many, many swatches of fabric to choose from, and that alone made it overwhelming. A thousand different textures, from coarse to perfectly smooth, and then a million shades of a million colors. The possibilities just didn’t seem to end, and that meant the fabric swatches just seemed to go on forever.
He quoted swatches of John F. Kennedy’s speeches to the crowd, but most of them looked at him as if were odd. Why quote from someone else? Why not speak from your own heart? The crowd said to each other as their mumbling became loud enough to distracted him. He stopped his speech as he looked over the crowd. He had lost them. He was not sure how to get them back now. He needed to make his point. That is when he scream out at the top of his lungs. That’s right kill Kennedy’s words just like he was killed. A hush came over the crowd he had their attention again. He then
She looked like a pile of scraps, all bound in cord. The young child stumbles forward, dragging the bespattered and patched cloak – her only possession – behind her like a blanket.
Dim dull doom, the eerie cry of the hyenas giggle, the howl of the wolf. The scratching of bears; was there not one side where predator not lay, with all desperation up we look – through the hollowed out roof – the stars shine with swatches of hope. The lion roars, the eagle soars, all hope restored.
Jose
It felt like I was just seeing a swatch of his life. Two seconds, a flash. Not the whole thing, but a little baby bit in order to understand. And that’s exactly what I didn’t do, but what I wanted to. I didn’t understand my swatch of his life. and it was driving me nuts.
Brooke Tuinei
There were seventeen different swatches of fabric on the kitchen table by the time Bill got home. The first thing he noticed was that his wife was staring at said swatches, rubbing her brow feverishly as she perused them and apparently analyzed them. The second thing he noticed was that all the swatches appeared to be the same shade of red.
“No, they’re not,” his wife protested when Bob commented on that. “You’re colorblind. These are clearly different. We have blood orange, burgundy, ketchup, brick, rust…”
Bob decided not to argue.
Belinda Roddie
Swatches of pain littered the walls, it was simply too hard to decide what color to paint the baby’s room. Of course it was in the lighter colors, blues, yellows, pinks, greens, nothing dark, but still, what color the room was could affect how the child grew up. And also, white was a boring color and wouldn’t be very good for a child’s developing mind.
Her remarks just vaguely registered in his head. He couldn’t match her enthusiasm for the fan of color swatches that she had in her hands – all he could think about was the very real possibility that his son or daughter would grow up to be just like him. And that scared the shit out of him.
When we started looking at those swatches of paint for the new apartment it finally felt like this was all becoming real. Eggshell? or dandelion? it didn’t matter to me I just wanted to get on with my life.
Fabric swatches are all I have left of you. They litter my room like the memories you now litter my brain. When you left, you literally left a whirlwind of your clothes all over my carpet, my bed, my dressers… it’s like you made up your mind to leave in a hurry and you couldn’t decide what to take and what to leave.
So you left a mess. You left me, and you left a mess.
She wore her Southern Spanish elegancy, a swatch–so utterly exotic, outlandish, all too gorgeous for my patience. Doubtful, I proceed, “MI AMOR”. She lovingly glared back at me, her open eyes, so ready, so imperfect to my patience–how could I not believe those eyes, questioning myself, until ceasing exhaustion. I raise my shaky confesses again, ” do you truly love me?”. She looks down upon nowhere, the swatches where voluntary blood, that we compromised with lustful grievance, looked back at her. Her lips were awkwardly beatific when she softly sang her vow to me, “I do love you”. Her hug grasped me to assure. “Everlastingly”, I said with slow emphasis. Again, I resounded “Everlastingly”. Our hug became a coil of a cobra. We loved, I trusted–a justification hard coming to my extents.
the forbidden lust that we nudge at ourselves,
avoidance, is naturally what we wipe away with,
left on the t-shirt, stained with indignation,
relentlessly , the fabric sheds the smell of dead flowers,
The sun burns our skin, yet radiates nutrition inside us,
swatches do so
mother’s vain wedding dress brought being a flowery era,
thus seeding he, her, it, the blue gown showing vulnerability,
swatches remember our days,
swatches remain as pieces to puzzles of our experiences.
watches i had in juniour high. mine had a flamingo on it and you oculd see through the back where the battery was. i thought i was coolxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddsssssssss bgfdbgfbgfgf
jody
She spread the blue-green swatches across the table and blew out a sigh. “What about these, Faye? Do you like them?”
“Not really, Aunt Cathy.” I admitted, chewing on my lip. I barely caught her rolling her eyes from my peripheral, and it made me feel bad. “I’m sorry for being so picky, Auntie, but I can’t help it! I want this dress to be perfect, y’know?”
She smiled at me and squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Faye, I don’t mind it. I remember my first prom…thing was, your Grandmother forgot to sew my dress until the day of! Gosh, it was embarrassing.” She put a hand to her head, as if reliving the memory.
I giggled. “But it worked out in the end, right?”
“Somewhat.” She took the cloth off the table and led me to the back of the shop. “Let’s see what else we’ve got here.”
The swatches simply didn’t fit the end result. This was, afterall, supposed to be a happy time in their lives. So, why couldn’t she get in the spirit? She held the dull greens and grays to her belly, as if to show the growing bump the colors of the room she’d be occupying for the coming years. She held the colors up to the walls, again, and then sat them back on her belly as she slumped lazily into the delicate rocking chair. She muttered, then swore. Getting up, she peeked out through the slit in the blinds at the vibrant neighborhood she felt so isolated from. She felt dull. She felt plain. She felt ugly–and fat. She turned, almost violently, and ran down the stairs, grabbing her car keys and purse. Returning three hours later, she felt refreshed–renewed. She wore a dress and danced, painting the walls with the new yellow paint she’d recovered during her adventure. Stepping back, she felt satisfied, admiring the room and it’s current occupants. Her husband would hate the color. And, she could smile at that.
She held swatches of the most beautiful shades.
Her decision was final. Leave the wall white. Paint a rainbow from one end to another to connect her bedroom to the one she’s standing in, her baby’s bedroom.
Swatches of cloth were piled here and there in the store, but I still were able to get some good pieces to take home to make my stuff pillows.
When I was young I loved going shopping with my mother. She was a very good dressmaker and would always look and feel the swatches of material.
Swatches, looks like watches. But with an S at the start. Which is interesting because I don’t actually know what this word means. So therefore I want to believe it’s a flying dinosaur.
swatches are fun swatches are dumb I don’t know what a swatch is so what can I really say? I think it is a watch but what makes it a swatch I guess I wont know unless I google it which I doubt I will
Samples looping color-coded swatches.
Keeping time with the click, click watches.
Phrases and clips wrapped in quick tip slips
Flickers on through the shine, shine hazes
No smoke. No toke. Cool joke. All fizz on a sleepy ki–
She awoke with a bell that ebbed out and then faded.
Swatches were what watches were in Vegas. At least back in ’09 or ’08 when my grandfather bought me mine. I hand lost it perhaps two years later, the feel of the steel band still is a phantom on my wrist. Some photographs of a younger, different me still wear that swatch.
am i going to spend my entire (Student) savings on a piece of plastic watch?
yes, sure it is comfortable but i rather buy something cheaper and has the same ffunction as a watch
whatever i am poor.
“You know, you’re very… colorful.” I try not to sound offensive with this observation, but Ida, being Ida, whips around.
“So, I like my patterns,” she sniffs, and then billows out her apron on the dining room table so I can see them all. The stripes and checks and pinks and yellows and reds and just the general brightness, all stitched together willy-nilly. “Can you see how it’s like art? A square from my rug, a square from a dish towel, a square from a quilt, a square from a cover I was gonna sew for my couch but ran outta fabric. It tells a story.
“And,” she adds, smoothing it down again and giving me one last withering glare over her shoulder, “it’s damn pretty, too.”
I sigh as she heads back into the kitchen. It’s hard to argue with that woman.
being the poor kid i am, i can’t afford to buy self a collection of swatches. the money that i have is only capable of giving me a few tricycle rides and small box of ice cream. i am wearing this worn out casio watch. pretty good for me
Swatches. I love paint swatches. Color swatches. They make me love my job.
Colors. They breathe life.
Delight my heart.
I looked upon my swatches, which colour would I use. There were so many, blue base, red, yellow. And I thought, how simple colours reflect us so well. I turned off the computer and left.
The swatches of colors hung on the wall, battered by the disagreement in the room. It was petty for their first fight to be over paint color, but it set the tone for what was to come.
swatches. I owed several swatches before. Thin one, thick one, over-size one. Swatch. The trusted name. Watch. I dont have a watch. whatever.
I stared at the paint swatches, trying to pick a colour, even a group of colours. Anything that would make this process easier. But I had no idea. Did it matter if I chose blue, yellow, green, pink? Would he care? Would he be around long enough to form an opinion? Really I was doing this for me, try as I might to convince anyone otherwise. This was my project.
watches that are designer cool …. like swathes etc colourful and zany
airports and duty free… small and large… different styles reflect the character of the owner… that’s all
When I first think of swatches, I think of when I started a youtube channel about makeup… but now I’ve dumped that in my goal of living simply (no more stock piling makeup and focusing on material things). I also have this memory of my Mom from when I was little. She would buy me swatches when she took me with her on business trips, and I always felt super cool as a kid with a fancy watch… One of the few good memories with my Mom was picking one out with her every year in NYC.
Little patches. Clothes mottled together like so many stitched memories. Cloaks of many colors adorning every motley fool they find. Guarding from the elements and containing within a storm of energy and wit. Swatches alone are naught but cloth, together they make my shirt, by troth.
“Wanna buy some swatches?”
She picked up the swatches of lace from the table and fingered through them. She had spent so much time wondering which pattern to use, but like all the other details she had fussed over in the past few months, it seemed totally irrelevant now. The wedding could wait.
All that mattered was that Jim recovered.
She’s like a punk rock Snow White. You’ve known her for so long you almost love her, not quite, because it’s something more than love. If that’s possible. Her smile is more intoxicating than any drug and damn, she’s kind of a bitch, but who isn’t nowadays. You want to spend your life with her. But you also want to slit her throat.
I had a recollection of ideas and thoughts.
I couldn’t seem to gather a story from them.
They were meaningless.
Swatches of unknown material
waiting for my mind to create a story.
Yet, nothing seems to come out of these ideas.
a sample piece of cloth a small amount or number in a cluster, bunch or patch. But I think of swats which isn’t a nice thing to think about.
Her fingers were frail on the needles and shook more then previous years had allowed. The design was simplistically complex. One that only age and experience could have brought into this world. She looked down at her near complete work and at the urn sitting over the fireplace.
“This one’s for you Earl.”
She finished up the final stitch and put on her black dress.
There were many, many swatches of fabric to choose from, and that alone made it overwhelming. A thousand different textures, from coarse to perfectly smooth, and then a million shades of a million colors. The possibilities just didn’t seem to end, and that meant the fabric swatches just seemed to go on forever.
He quoted swatches of John F. Kennedy’s speeches to the crowd, but most of them looked at him as if were odd. Why quote from someone else? Why not speak from your own heart? The crowd said to each other as their mumbling became loud enough to distracted him. He stopped his speech as he looked over the crowd. He had lost them. He was not sure how to get them back now. He needed to make his point. That is when he scream out at the top of his lungs. That’s right kill Kennedy’s words just like he was killed. A hush came over the crowd he had their attention again. He then
She looked like a pile of scraps, all bound in cord. The young child stumbles forward, dragging the bespattered and patched cloak – her only possession – behind her like a blanket.
Dim dull doom, the eerie cry of the hyenas giggle, the howl of the wolf. The scratching of bears; was there not one side where predator not lay, with all desperation up we look – through the hollowed out roof – the stars shine with swatches of hope. The lion roars, the eagle soars, all hope restored.
It felt like I was just seeing a swatch of his life. Two seconds, a flash. Not the whole thing, but a little baby bit in order to understand. And that’s exactly what I didn’t do, but what I wanted to. I didn’t understand my swatch of his life. and it was driving me nuts.
There were seventeen different swatches of fabric on the kitchen table by the time Bill got home. The first thing he noticed was that his wife was staring at said swatches, rubbing her brow feverishly as she perused them and apparently analyzed them. The second thing he noticed was that all the swatches appeared to be the same shade of red.
“No, they’re not,” his wife protested when Bob commented on that. “You’re colorblind. These are clearly different. We have blood orange, burgundy, ketchup, brick, rust…”
Bob decided not to argue.
Swatches of pain littered the walls, it was simply too hard to decide what color to paint the baby’s room. Of course it was in the lighter colors, blues, yellows, pinks, greens, nothing dark, but still, what color the room was could affect how the child grew up. And also, white was a boring color and wouldn’t be very good for a child’s developing mind.
my mother’s store is filled with squares of cardboard covered in swatches of cloth
cobalt chiffon
turquoise tulle
silver satin
“I really like that creamy orange color.”
Her remarks just vaguely registered in his head. He couldn’t match her enthusiasm for the fan of color swatches that she had in her hands – all he could think about was the very real possibility that his son or daughter would grow up to be just like him. And that scared the shit out of him.
When we started looking at those swatches of paint for the new apartment it finally felt like this was all becoming real. Eggshell? or dandelion? it didn’t matter to me I just wanted to get on with my life.
Fabric swatches are all I have left of you. They litter my room like the memories you now litter my brain. When you left, you literally left a whirlwind of your clothes all over my carpet, my bed, my dressers… it’s like you made up your mind to leave in a hurry and you couldn’t decide what to take and what to leave.
So you left a mess. You left me, and you left a mess.
You left me IN a mess.
You left a mess of me.
She wore her Southern Spanish elegancy, a swatch–so utterly exotic, outlandish, all too gorgeous for my patience. Doubtful, I proceed, “MI AMOR”. She lovingly glared back at me, her open eyes, so ready, so imperfect to my patience–how could I not believe those eyes, questioning myself, until ceasing exhaustion. I raise my shaky confesses again, ” do you truly love me?”. She looks down upon nowhere, the swatches where voluntary blood, that we compromised with lustful grievance, looked back at her. Her lips were awkwardly beatific when she softly sang her vow to me, “I do love you”. Her hug grasped me to assure. “Everlastingly”, I said with slow emphasis. Again, I resounded “Everlastingly”. Our hug became a coil of a cobra. We loved, I trusted–a justification hard coming to my extents.
the forbidden lust that we nudge at ourselves,
avoidance, is naturally what we wipe away with,
left on the t-shirt, stained with indignation,
relentlessly , the fabric sheds the smell of dead flowers,
The sun burns our skin, yet radiates nutrition inside us,
swatches do so
mother’s vain wedding dress brought being a flowery era,
thus seeding he, her, it, the blue gown showing vulnerability,
swatches remember our days,
swatches remain as pieces to puzzles of our experiences.
watches i had in juniour high. mine had a flamingo on it and you oculd see through the back where the battery was. i thought i was coolxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddsssssssss bgfdbgfbgfgf
She spread the blue-green swatches across the table and blew out a sigh. “What about these, Faye? Do you like them?”
“Not really, Aunt Cathy.” I admitted, chewing on my lip. I barely caught her rolling her eyes from my peripheral, and it made me feel bad. “I’m sorry for being so picky, Auntie, but I can’t help it! I want this dress to be perfect, y’know?”
She smiled at me and squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Faye, I don’t mind it. I remember my first prom…thing was, your Grandmother forgot to sew my dress until the day of! Gosh, it was embarrassing.” She put a hand to her head, as if reliving the memory.
I giggled. “But it worked out in the end, right?”
“Somewhat.” She took the cloth off the table and led me to the back of the shop. “Let’s see what else we’ve got here.”