Did you know that, once upon a time, the color green killed people? Up into the latter half of the 1800’s, arsenic was used as part of the green coloring process for different textiles, with deadly results.

These days, thankfully, we don’t have that particular worry when we use greens in textiles.

There’s another notion of “poison” in color theory, too, that can be helpful when choosing colors. Quilters use this approach quite often – adding a “poison” color to a main color scheme by choosing a color directly opposite on the color wheel to the main color scheme. This makes the main color scheme spring to life in a curious way and can add a certain vivacity to a scheme that may otherwise seem somewhat lifeless.

Today, let’s chat about a shade of green that was the springboard for a discussion I had last week. It comes across as a kind of poisonous shade – something you might expect to find glowing eerily through the heavy mist on a dark night when that radioactive thingamabob from your nightmares comes lumbering after you.