Raven and Sparrow

Capturing the sacred

Asked to describe the religious background of his childhood, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie* told a story of helping his mother set the table every Friday for Shabbat. He would use her best dishes and scour the neighborhood for flowers to make it pretty. That he, the latest in a long line of famous rabbis, would choose to characterize his spiritual upbringing in this simple way testifies to the connection between our aesthetic sensibilities and our awareness of that-which-is-greater than our material, surface lives. The presence of the sacred is a will o' the wisp in everyday existence, easily missed, but always profound when noticed. Beauty is one of its markers, so we seek and make beauty to place ourselves into the larger, deeper flow of life coursing through and beyond our immediate moment. By cleaning, decorating and "making special" we point to and enhance the elusive spirit that animates our lives.

"Setting the table" is a metaphor for creating context. As he literally set his mother's table Rabbi Lau-Lavie made a place for his family to celebrate their religious beliefs through time-honored ritual. By taking care and exercising his creativity he upheld and burnished the importance of Shabbat, but it is the actual acts of care-taking and beautifying themselves that he remembers most clearly and connects to his spiritual heritage. This shows the power hiding in the mundane, daily maintenance of our world....the repetitive, lowly tasks of cleaning and creating the atmosphere in which we exist. Mending, dusting, polishing and arranging are the unappreciated activities that keep our surroundings linked to the beauty of the sacred and create the context that helps us see it.

 

* From an On Being interview with Krista Tippett, of course.

August birthdays

Both of my sisters have birthdays in August and we usually get together to celebrate. This year it was at my house so once again I went to my linen closet to decide how to set the table. I found myself reluctant to iron a big tablecloth and considered several squares, which are easier to press, but wasn't excited about any of them. When I found the blue and green kantha stitched runner I thought the color scheme was appropriate for summer....blue water flecked with turquoise and deep green trees....  Using the runner meant I had to have an undercloth, so I ended up ironing anyway....might as well have just accepted it from the start. It wasn't too bad, actually. The medium weight linen I made it from is easier to handle than the heavier weight fabric I have been using for Lisa's table lately. I might go back to using the medium exclusively.

Since it was a casual lunch I decided against using candles and wondered what else I could add for interest. Checking through my accessories yielded the little green bowls, the tumbled glass bits and the dull green napkin holders. I got the napkin rings years ago almost for free at a close-out sale, but have never had a use for them until now. Yay!  I used my everyday Fiesta turquoise plates, but the biggest find in the china cupboard was the blue bird tray. I thought one of my sisters had given it to me, but they both disavowed any knowledge. Wherever it came from, it added a real lift to the very simple table. 

We had an excellent birthday celebration for the Summer Sisters, may there be many more.

Sewing the circle

I'm still working daily on Lisa's autumn runner and have started to embroider the center "sun". One of the things I really like about the silk screened image I used as the base for this is it's unregimented, loosey-goosey quality in a still coherent shape. I took it from a small, etched metal piece made by my jeweler friend, with her permission. The trouble that has arisen in this iteration is the need to "bring up" the center motif to the visual level of the other elements in the design...right now, the wheat ears. That means I have to embroider it, but it is hard to embroider loose shapes without constraining and calcifying them. My solution is to use loose waggly lines that don't cover or encase each shape like the wheat ears are covered, but allow the underlying blobs to show through. I find that even though I have just used one strand of floss and tried to keep the embroidery delicate I have changed the feeling of the medallion quite a lot. At first I didn't like it, but in the absence of any other workable solution I kept at it and now see something new emerging. As every piece at some point takes over its own creation, I am being told to let this be what it is becoming and will take it to the end. 

Another practical element that I felt was necessary was the addition of a backing piece to keep the large circle from cupping. I was fortunate to find a scrap of harem cloth in my stash, basted it to the back and now am embroidering through it so the circle is reinforced. Eventually it will be trimmed more closely to the circle shape and will then disappear behind the larger backing I'm planning to apply when all the embroidery is finished.

 

 

Return to french seams

It has taken a long time, but I have just finished a large undercloth for Lisa's table in natural linen. You may recall, though why would you, that Lisa's table is too wide to make fully covering tablecloths including a double thickness folded edge out of the six yard lengths i usually allocate. If I make the necessary added bands around the main cloth piece out of single, unfolded strips I get raw edges on the back side that will ravel and look ugly compared to the double wide strips that can be folded back to cover all the seam edges on the back. This cloth was an experiment in using french seams to enclose the raw edges and thus result in a neat, un-ravelly back side for my tablecloth. To make the french seams I put wrong sides together, stitched a half inch in, trimmed that seam to a quarter inch (stitching a quarter inch seam on such long lengths of linen would be too hard to control for me), turned the cloth so that right sides were together and stitched again, enclosing the first clipped edge entirely and resulting in a neat tab on the back side. I pulled threads to mark the first half inch seam, and then pulled another thread three eighths of an inch on either side to mark where I wanted to sew for both lines of this two part seam.

The part I never figured out was what to do where the french seams come together with the mitered seam that makes the corners. I ended up getting everything as close as possible and then hand overcasting anything that was left with a raw edge. Its not too bad, but it seems (ha ha) like there must be a more elegant solution. Does anyone know how to do this? I have yet to find a book or You Tube tutorial that addresses it.

I have another big undercloth to make for Lisa, but I am thinking of doing something different...a large quilted square. It would have to be larger than the squares I usually make (which would mean again adding borders) but I think squares are more dynamic on the table than fully covering rectangles. Still, they have to be big enough for all the plates to fit on because a plate half on and half off a tablecloth is uncomfortable. A quilted tablecloth will be more protective for the table than a single weight, but the most important attributes to me are the visual texture a quilted cloth would add and the ease of ironing. Taking care of these big tablecloths is a pain in the tail. I think a quilted cloth would be much simpler to care for and I would like that both for myself and the people to whom I give my cloths. I'm still rolling this over in my mind.

Birds of a feather

A much anticipated reunion of friends from our old neighborhood sent me to the closet to pick an appropriate tablecloth and kick start a summer setting. I pulled out quite a pile of cloth without feeling inspired when suddenly a filmy rayon scarf printed with little birds fell into my hands. I remembered the last time I went with these same friends to visit a local botanical garden (something we used to do very regularly) and in the gift shop found this simple summer scarf.  I liked the color combination and the calligraphic drawings of the little birds and so I bought it as my sole souvenir of our trip. I think it cost twenty dollars. It came home and disappeared into my pile, never to be seen until now. Holding it reminded me so strongly of good times past that I decided it would be the design dictator for the table. Orange, olive green, black and cream....the undercloth was obvious, and so were the cream colored napkins, although I have matching green ones as well. Ditto my favorite green glasses from the sixties and the motley green votive holders for the centerpiece. The terra cotta dishes are rarely used, but were by far the most compatible in my dish collection. Flowers were a puzzle. I actually have some osteospermum (African daisies) that come very close to the dullish yellow and red-brown colors in the scarf, but it turned out that the more vibrant true yellow and orange nasturtiums sparked much more life on the table. I am always drawn to the viney swoops and round foliage of nasturtium stems. They introduce an exuberant note that is perfect for a summer gathering of fairly exuberant friends. Our number was increased by the last minute appearance of my brother and his partner, who fit in perfectly and helped create a memorable evening. Viva la summer!