Raven and Sparrow

Gathering ungathered

The shibori cloth I have been working on has been released. I took the gathered brown piece and tried to discharge the color with thiourea dioxide. It didn't work at all. I tried three times and, although it looked like it was lightening in process, once it got washed there was no difference at all. I am wondering if there is something wrong with my thiourea dioxide. It works well as a reducer in my indigo pots, but now that I think about it, I haven't had success discharging with it in a long time. It's supposed to last forever, but maybe it doesn't. Anyway, when the color didn't disappear, I turned to Clorox and just bleached the thing. That took the brown out all right. I wish I remembered to photograph it before I put it into indigo. After three dips of three minutes each this is the blue I got.

As usual, when I released the stitching I was surprised by what the cloth looked like. The pattern was the usual wobbly dental x-ray, but I thought the brown left in the cloth would make it look more dark and dull. Instead, the brown "teeth" read as pale yellow. The cloth is brighter and lighter than I expected. More summery, just in time for summer. It isn't a very elaborate design for all the time it took to put it in, but it should be a useful cloth. Now I have to hem it.

 

Green flowers and blue ribbons

Spring lasts for while in the Northwest, so the viney checkerboard tablecloth has come back into play again. I must admit that I am getting tired of this color scheme and planned to make a change, but the flowers from last week still looked great and I just couldn't justify the expense of new ones. This week the table needed to accomodate six instead of eight so I dispensed with the dark green undercloth and switched from the ivy cloth back to this one which is a little larger. The blue ribbons from last week look very well with it and give the table a contrasty punch. I thought it come out pretty well even though it wasn't exactly breaking new ground. The people we were entertaining are our old friends from our former neighborhood. They were the guests at some of our original dinners...the ones that showed me what fun it can be to gather around the table with people you like and eat and talk and laugh through dessert and on into the night. I wanted the table to be special for them and felt a little uncomfortable when this one came together so easily. When I recognized what was causing my uneasiness I had to laugh because I have been working all these years to make setting the table easy and affordable. Now that I have succeeded at least this once I worry that I haven't tried hard enough. I can't let myself win. This quandry does remind me that "making special" is what I am trying to do, and the effort and thought I put into the settings and the dinners are part of the gift I am trying to offer. Striking a balance between ease and effort is part of the puzzle I guess. Another balance that needs to be considered is the one between using what I have versus buying new. It just seems wasteful to throw out perfectly good flowers (and how often do flowers last a whole week?) because I want new colors. Aesthetic satisfaction always battles with what is available and what it costs. The flowers are starting to fade now, so I'm free to begin again, but in the meantime, this was an appropriate and pretty table for a happy reunion. 

Old cloth springs back

Our weather has reverted to chilly rain, but on Sunday we were gifted with a perfect spring day. Since we were expecting my cousin and her family for the day and dinner I was delighted, because we had planned a hike in the park. It turned out to be a great day for walking. When I looked out the window all I saw were shades of green, so I set the table in all the greens I had. I started with an older cotton cloth that I painted with fabric paint over a wax resisted ivy pattern. It has many shades of green, including blue greens. I layered it over a dark green full size cloth and added green plates, chartreuse accents and, finally, blue ribbon to pick up the blue end of the ivy colors. I've used this tablecloth many times but this was a fresh look for it. We had a lovely day with our cousins.

The gathering

Finally, finally all the stitching got done....twenty one rows folded and sewed with a running stitch along the fold edge. The next thing was to gather them up as tightly as I could. That took quite a while too, and was hard on my fingers. The cloth now looks like an Elizabethan sleeve. The next thing is to put it into a discharge bath and see how much of the color I can take out. This project has really been slow.

 

Summer preview

Suddenly we have gone from our volatile, rather chilly spring weather to warm sunshine and perfect temperatures. May often offers these tantalizing glimpses of summer and when they occur we rush outside and begin summer activities even though we know it is only a preview. This week the bright sun and sparkling water urged us to invite some friends for a traditional summer cook-out with hamburgers, potato salad and fruit....all the standard menu items of a thousand remembered picnics. The strong nostagic quality of all of this led me to choose a vintage tablecloth that came from Mike's mother. She loved picnics and used to drag us to the beach at the slightest hint of sunshine. Even though this dinner would be inside, using her tablecloth (which is not a reproduction, but a true printed cloth from the forties) reminded me so much of her. It's colors are a little unusual, and the bright red elements called for good strong red flowers. Of course it is still spring, so tulips were an obvious choice. The tulip fields of Skagit Valley are still rendering up their gorgeous bounty and I bought an armload of red. Scattering blue glass marbles in the bottom of the vase helped link the flowers to the color scheme. I only had three aqua colored Fiesta plates (I used to have four, what happened to the last one?) so I had to use green plates too. The Fostoria tumblers and the Danish flatware are also inherited from Mike's mother, so altogether it was a setting straight from her to us and our guests. We ate and drank and talked, enjoying the prospect of summer with all our hearts.