Raven and Sparrow

More color at night

It has been quite a while (years) since my cousin asked me to dye a couple of pieces for her....a white flannel nightgown and a cotton gauze robe/overshirt. I of course said I would, put them away and forgot about them. When I cleaned my studio this summer I found them again and, stung by my dilatory ways, got to work. The two pieces were in good shape, but showed a little wear and had some places where the fabric had yellowed. They were very different in weight. I assumed that they were meant to be worn together and tried to think of ways to coordinate them more clearly.

It took a while for a plan to roll up into my conscious mind. First I scoured the garments thoroughly in hopes of ridding them of any oils or finishes and mordanted them in aluminum acetate. I decided to mark each piece with measured pencil dots, poke a needle up from behind each dot to gather a little tuft of fabric and tie it off with crochet thread. This is, of course, an ancient technique taken to the enth degree of refinement in the traditions of China, India, Japan and Indonesia. My efforts were crude, as befits an amateur, but at length I incorporated a series of knots around the bottom of the robe and the nightgown. I also added knots at the shoulders of each piece.  

The next step was to choose a color. My cousin had requested warm colors and I thought of all the possibilities in my palette of natural dyes. I settled on madder because I thought I could get two colors that were different, but related. I dyed the heavier nightgown in a bath of madder extract using 10% dye on the weight of the goods and added Tums for calcium in hopes of encouraging the red end of the  madder spectrum. Madder has the most complicated chemical make up of all the natural dyes, including alizurin and purpurin. It goes brown if the bath gets too hot. I carefully brought the dye pot up to 160 degrees F and kept it there for two hours, then let the nightgown cool in the pot overnight. When I took it out it was almost black. The flannel fabric really sucked up the color. When I got it washed out it turned brick red. I was pretty happy until I saw the purple marks scattered right down the front of the gown. Bad words here. Untying the knots revealed rows of irregular little circles like bubbles. I thought there would be more marks from the folds between the knots, but that did not happen. Okay.

The robe was next, dyed in the same extract as the gown, but only at 3% on the weight of the goods, also with Tums added. It immediately turned the most beautiful coral. I kept the timing the same and the next morning it was much darker and more orange than it had been before. After wash-out some of the coral tones returned but it was still orangier than it had been. However, the color did go well with the gown, as I had hoped. 

Embroidery was the only way I could think of to hide the unsightly marks on the nightgown, so I used the circle motif as a flower center (or a sun) and did lazy daisy stitches all around. Scattering these down the front and at random places in the phalanxes of circles made for a cohesive overall effect. I used coral thread for the gown and did the same with brick red for the robe. 

The final change was new buttons on the robe. One of the original buttons broke in the dye process so I had no choice but to change them out. Fortunately I was able to find some the right color at my local fabric store and so...finally...the project was complete. I think my patient cousin was pleased and the pieces looked really nice on her.

   

 

The vulgarity of colored glass

Growing up in my family as the oldest of seven children, I suspected that there were niceties at the table that we were not being taught. We always ate well, and good manners were required (woe to the ones who talked with their mouth full), but the table settings were utilitarian at best...the bare minimum dish and utensil count to keep after dinner clean-up quick. We never ate out because no one would invite so many children to any but the most informal picnic-style meal and my parents could not afford to feed us in restaurants. When I went away to camp and made the horrendous error of passing a dish of food across the table, I was treated to one of those Mabel-Mabel-strong-and-able-keep-your-elbows-off-the-table kind of rhymes sung by all of my tablemates to remind me never to do that again. Of course I didn't, but until then I had no idea that there was any such rule. Books and pamphlets about proper behavior and etiquette occasionally came my way, usually written in decades past about the arcane uses of pickle forks and when it was acceptable to use placemats (informal ladies' luncheons) instead of a full cloth (10" drop minimum, please, white or ivory only). This showed me a different standard of living and pointed out intricate areas of knowledge of which I was ignorant. I've always felt that ignorance is dangerous, and so tried to absorb what I could about things that were not in my experience. One of the sweeping pronouncements I took to heart was that colored glassware on the table was vulgar. Suspecting in my heart that I was vulgar, I could not abide colored glasses. Even in the sixties when casual entertaining began to supplant the old formality and tableware became much more varied I would turn away from colored glasses with a sniff. 

Fortunately even such rigid shibboleths as this can be worn down by time and eaten by the growth of self confidence. Some years ago, when table setting became more and more interesting to me, I began to collect such tinted glassware as looked well on my tables, going so far as to acquire some of the old pieces that I had secretly admired but could not countenance from years before. My pink wine glasses and green Morgantown tumblers were some I remembered from the seventies and I love them both. I have received lovely colored glasses as gifts and they have made my tables much more engaging.  Every time I get them out though I hear that hoity toity voice proclaim them to be vulgar and I have to laugh at the smug assurance that would say such a thing and the insecurity that would believe it.

This weekend colored glass ran riot on the table as we gathered to celebrate my son's birthday. It was a happy occasion and no one gave a thought to vulgarity, except in terms of the election.