Raven and Sparrow

Lisa's summer

Lisa's summer table is built on the dragonfly/foxglove cloth I made over a very long period of time (documented here on the blog). After so many hours working and imagining how this cloth would work, I finally got to see it's effectiveness in action.

The high patterning of the cloth prompted me to keep the other elements on the table as simple as possible. I chose clear glass and plain, rounded shapes for for the vase and glassware, and kept the candles small and low. (The little tealights scattered about reminded me of fireflies, although we don't have those magical summer insects here.) Plain napkins tied with lavender ribbon echo the colors in the foxgloves and the purple edge.

 

The cloth works a little better up close because the details of the flowers don't read as well when you stand back. The dishes and flatware break up the '"picture" so it is harder to read from a distance. I think a table should look good from the doorway to entice you to sit down, and then be equally enjoyable as you take your individual place. I'm not actually unhappy with this table as I stand back, but I do see the difference. Another thing that I notice is the difference between the table in real life, and in the photographs I took. Melding two layers of fabric can be tricky. There is a whole lot of stitching around all of the motifs, but the areas that are not as heavily stitched are hard to keep from wrinkling. When I set the table it didn't bother me, but what looked textural and hand-made in person just looks wrinkly in the pictures. 

This square cloth is large enough to use without an under cloth which makes the table simpler than some of the other seasons. The checkerboard edge is important to bring a sense of summery lightness to the rather dark central section. Does it look like summer to you? 
 

Lisa's spring

 

If Lisa's winter table was underdone, the one for spring is the opposite. Soon after she agreed to participate in my project, we wandered together through the fun shops of a nearby town and came upon a woven scarf that we both really liked. It had various graphic patterns in dark grays and blues, shot with unexpected bands of bright color. We both thought of spring and bought it as the foundation piece for her spring table. Like the winter table, this runner speaks to spring as we experience it here in the Pacific Northwest. Spring comes early, but in fits and starts, with much variation in temperature and atmospherics. The clouds can be low and oppressive one minute and then break suddenly, allowing shafts of sunlight to pierce the dark and illuminate patches of new growth or flowering trees. (The view from Lisa's porch on the day I was there to photograph the tables was a perfect example.)  The bright color spectrums woven into the scarf also reminded us of the many colors of primroses that decorate the nurseries here in early spring...usually the first flowers available as winter comes to an end. 

I thought layering the scarf over an under cloth of spring green would evoke our springtime nicely, but the bright colors in the cloth just didn't read strongly enough, even up close. I tried to punch them up by adding embroidery, but it still was too subtle. I needed more bright colors on a dark background, so I dug up some navy blue linen and made a small square embroidered with strong springy (I hoped) motifs. Then I made napkin rings with the same colors and designs. It felt like I was pushing and pushing.....more, more, more.

When the table came together I could feel the effort behind it, which undermines the design I think. I continued the multi-colored theme with the glassware (thank you Amazon) and tulips. No candles or holders that I could find added anything to the table, so I left them off. 

The large quilted square I used under everything else worked really well. I like the texture and it is much easier to iron and handle than a plain cloth made of the same linen in a single layer, so that experiment was a success. The strong graphics of the scarf and the bright colors escape springtime pastel cliche, but cliches are also a way to communicate, and I cannot tell of this table communicates or confuses. Nonetheless....spring.

Lisa's winter

After an interminable time....years, in fact.....I have finished my seasonal series for my sister Lisa and photographed the results in her dining room. I started with her Kate Spade dishes with the dragonfly motif, which I like very much. I designed a table setting for each season, including the tablecloths, napkins and accessories. Some of the settings started with purchased yardage, and others involved the hand-dyed and embroidered cloths I made myself and have documented in fits and starts here on the blog. 

The first setting I'll show now is Winter. I made an under cloth of gray undyed natural linen to fit Lisa's table. On top of that I laid a square made of purchased upholstery cloth (washable, of course) in a brown leafy pattern with random black marks. It reminds me of the forest floor here in winter, long after the leaves have fallen and lost their colors, but still are ankle deep on the trails. It takes all winter for them to break down and we often don't have snow to cover them up or speed up the process. The lack of color speaks of winter too...our climate is gray and the days are very short, so the dimness is more appropriate for us here in the Pacific Northwest than jolly snowmen or other usual winter motifs.

On this I set the dishes, with black napkins and taupe tumblers. For a centerpiece I used a black vase filled with thin brown branches and a wiry garland of gold stars, placed on top of a tatted doily. Gold candlesticks and gold cord on the napkins added a little more glitter to a very low key table.

 

 

I miscalculated on the proportions of the doily because I set this (and all the tables) up first on my own table which is seven inches narrower than Lisa's table. There is a little too much empty space around the very minimal centerpiece. I must admit I really like the way the lace doily shows up against the background without being too showy. It just should have been twice as large. The whole process reminded me how rusty I am with the photography and how tiring it is to set and re-set the table, but it is done and I will show you the rest of the settings in upcoming posts. 

 

 

A season of sadness

 

I was doing okay with my intention to blog regularly, until my dad's health began to fail. He has been declining since he fell a couple of years ago and this spring things really began to go downhill. All through March we kept the road hot down to Seattle to see him and then sit in the hospital with him and my mother. All seven of us siblings were able to be with him in the last week of his life, although the real burden of support fell on those that lived the closest. He died on March 28, eleven days after his ninety-second birthday. (Since he was born on Saint Patrick's Day, of course his name was Pat.) We all gathered again on May 1 for his funeral Mass. Even though his life was quite a long one and we have been watching the end approach for a while, the family now has a hole that can never be filled. I will miss him until it is my turn.

Linens for Lisa

Having finished the tablecloths for Lisa's seasonal series, Mike and I had to clear away furniture in the living room and take down our biggest picture to make a place to photograph them. It was enough trouble to make me put it off for quite a while and now that it is done I can see that I didn't get the lighting right. Oh well. At least I have pictures of most of the pieces I've made, starting with  foxglove and dragonfly Summer, which is a large enough square to use on the table without an undercloth.

For Spring I have the quilted square in fresh yellow green, to go under a runner that Lisa and I purchased together in one of our favorite shops. It is a woven wool scarf that we both agreed reminds us of Northwest springtime....darks and grays shot with the bright colors of flowers. When I started working with it I realized that the colored bits were a little too understated, so I tried to punch them up with embroidery in chartreuse and turquoise.

That still wasn't enough, so I added a 24" square of navy blue with bright embroideries. There are similarly embroidered napkin holders to go with it. The colors are not the usual spring pastels, but I hope the green undercloth will send the right seasonal signals.

For Winter I purchased fabric in a pattern of brown, gray and black leaves that I first thought would be good for autumn. The more I thought about it, the more it looked to me like the ground under the alder trees in winter after the leaves have fallen and turned to a brown jumble underfoot. It will go over the full sized undercloth in grayish natural linen that I made ages ago, with french seams.

I have recently shown the autumn runner, but here it is again to complete the set, with its quilted undercloth dyed with chestnut. Click on it to see the detail.

These are the textile pieces I'll be using to set her tables. I am down to the final details now. There is one bonus piece I purchased with a subdued broad stripe which looks really good with her dishes. It will go over the same gray full sized undercloth that I will use for winter. I am not sure how to accessorize it, but there is something simple and carefree about it that I like. I keep imagining geraniums with it, but it could be used in any season.

Now I have to set a date with Lisa.

 

 

End in sight

With the purplish gray napkins for Lisa's autumn table finished, I am very close to the end of this incredibly drawn out project. I still have to photograph the foxglove square, and should probably do the winter and spring cloths too, just for documentary purposes. I have to iron everything and pack it up so as not to have to iron it again, and tote all the elements down to Lisa's house, about an hour and a half away. There I will take pictures of all the settings with her dishes and silverware and then hand them off to her and keep the pictures for myself. The centerpieces are the wild cards, since I won't know what flowers are available until the last minute. It will take a full day to get it done, not counting the packing and list making. It has really been a long time since my last seasonal project for Becky. Lots has happened, or stopped happening, in the interim. I am thinking ahead to future ideas, and wondering if my pace is so slow as to make the whole idea unfeasible. I don't know. it does feel satisfying to get Lisa's table to the finish line. I hope the settings will be worth all the time it has taken.

Waiting for spring

These are the days that drag you down. Not  severe, not  scary, nothing to join with others to get through together, just dreary, uncomfortable and short. The sky droops low overhead, the water is sullen and choppy, the land is dull and soggy. February in the Pacific Northwest is the best time to go somewhere else. It was so dark today that the lights were on from morning to night. I have some sewing to do on Lisa's napkins, but it will have to wait for a brighter day because the gray of the fabric is just too close to the gray of the sky. Fortunately, there are little hints that better times are ahead. Tiny green beads of budding leaves are starting to stud the underbrush along the driveway and daffodils are pushing their way up through the dead stuff in the garden. It will only be a couple of weeks before the first wildflowers appear as if by magic on the hillside. To remind myself of this miracle, I cut some twigs from the red currant bushes in the woods and stuck them in a vase. The warmth of the house makes them leap into leaf and I can watch it happen right before my eyes. Spring!

 

Pattern on pattern

It has been a long time since I have set a "new" table. In recent years the pandemic and my illness combined to keep my table settings infrequent and minimal, always defaulting to the easiest options that I had set before. This weekend, finally, I tried something different. Because it is so close to Valentine's Day, the grocery store was full of red roses so I thought maybe something in red would be appropriate for the season. I don't use red very often, but I did have a length of dull red linen from a project that never got going and I thought it would be easy to pair it with a lacy runner and the red roses to make a romantic sort of feeling on the table. Once I pulled those things together, though, they were flat and uninspired. I kept thinking PATTERN was needed, but was at a loss for what to do until a search through my bins yielded a chintz square that I made in the nineties when big florals were the rage. I thought it had the requisite romance, and because it introduced blue into the scheme I could use my Wedgewood reproduction plates for pattern on pattern. I usually use the little round red candle holders as vases, but they easily switched roles and echoed the true red of the flowers. It is pretty simple, really, relying on the patterns to underline the intense, dense roses as the the focal point. I'm not sure it is the best thing I have ever done, but it felt good to flex my ingenuity a little and come up with a response to the moment. The dinner party was quite successful in introducing some people who didn't know each other before and I hope the setting helped make them feel cared for and welcome.

Paris gray

It has literally been years since I have dyed any fabric. My studio has been dis-assembled and my projects have been limping along using whatever energy I can scrounge from daily life, but little by little Lisa's project has been taking shape. I have all the tablecloths finished and am now pulling together the accessories....centerpieces, napkins, etc. It always surprises me how much time and effort this part takes, but I have come down to one last hurdle...the napkins for Lisa's autumn table. All of the table linens I make are washable but I prefer to use commercially dyed linen for napkins because they always bear the brunt of heavy use at the table and must endure lots of time in the laundry. This time though, I just couldn't find the right color. It took a while to even decide what color I was looking for. The autumn runner I made has gold, red-peach, and purple gray elements.

I had to set up the whole table with dishes, centerpiece and glassware to figure out what accent color would blend cohesively with the table as a whole. I finally settled on Parisian gray, which is a very gray lavender, but then could not find anything that wasn't too red, too blue, too bright, or too dark. I realized that I would just have to dye it myself, using the same colors I used when I made the runner in the first place. Easier said than done, of course. All of my studio stuff is piled high in one room of the old house. It took awhile to find the dyes themselves, and then I had to assemble the fabric (yay, two yards of lightweight linen were lurking in a tote), the kettle, the stove, the scale, the beakers, the thermometers, and the stirring spoons and sticks. Also gloves, mask, and oops, order more mordant. Finally, I mixed equal amounts of logwood purple and logwood gray and returned to the age-old stance of vigilance, stirring my steaming pot and peering anxiously at the developing color. 

It came out okay. The dye is even and the color is good, if a little dark. Whew.

 

 

Exploring Lopez Island

Sometimes getting away doesn't have to involve a lot of distance. Mike and I grew up on the edge of the San Juan Islands and have visited the two largest islands many times and some of the smaller islands occasionally. However, for some reason, neither of us had ever visited Lopez Island, the third largest and the one located straight across Rosario Strait from our home island, Fidalgo. We decided to check it out and booked an airbnb for a couple days in the third week of January. That's an iffy time around here, weather-wise, but we figured it wouldn't make too much difference, so off we went. We ended up in a tiny but charming cabin almost directly across the water from our house. It perched above its own little beach in splendid isolation, offering complete quiet and a gorgeous view of where we had come from.

When I was growing up here, it felt like the end of the world. Even Seattle in those days was sort of small-townish and off the beaten track, and the islands, most of which were only reachable by ferry, were like stepping back in time. They are still at the whim of the ferry system and distinctly less populated than the mainland, but Orcas and San Juan Islands have acquired a kind of gloss as more and more tourists besiege them every summer. Lopez has its share of summer visitors, but even in the winter doldrums it is clear that it has many fewer residents than the others. The occasional drivers on the road always wave when you pass because they assume that they know you. With the same vocabulary of rocky headlands, quiet bays and pebbly beaches with which we are so familiar, it yet has its own ambiance. Its open spaces are extensive and its wood are deep. The shoreline is amazingly convoluted, with the most bays, spits, harbors and headlands of any of the islands, and many small islets scattered off the coast. There are lots of beautiful walks, but the signage is very minimal, so we relied on the kind directions of people that we met to find our way. In the dim light of a Northwest January, we walked and walked, almost entirely alone. In two days we barely scratched the surface so we will have to go back.

 

This was "our" beach beneath our cabin.

We had this headland and little bay completely to ourselves after an extensive walk through dark woods.

Watmough Bay has no houses, amenities or structures of any kind visible from the beach. You can get a feeling for what it was like here before any outsiders arrived.