Raven and Sparrow

Ironing out the wrinkles

Finally, finally I have finished the gold under cloth for Lisa's autumn table. I have been experimenting with quilted tablecloths to try to make them easier to handle and to iron. The first one I had quilted by long arm machine and I thought it turned out well, so I tried to quilt this one myself. To keep everything very simple, I just sewed line after line to make a checkerboard. It took forever and I found it pretty tedious. My sewing is wobbly and I think the final result is more like alligator skin, but it will be okay. Once it was finished, I had to wash the quilt. Taking it out of the dryer damp, this is how it looked.

It is very knobbly, but it lays well. It could be used this way. However, I wanted to see how hard it was to iron and how it would look if I did. It took quite a while and some pressure to flatten it, but it did become more smooth. Once ironed it was much easier to handle without re-wrinkling it than an unquilted cloth but I am not sure if the quilting is worth the effort. Even ironed it retains some texture...that alligator sensibility.

Laying the finished runner on top shows that the color of the under cloth may be a little too strong. Even though it matches the thread of the embroidery, the dimensionality and glossiness of the floss reflects the light differently and makes the wheat et al look lighter. 

Over time the quilt will lighten and probably become more integrated with the runner, but this is what I have now. The next step will be to decide what centerpiece, napkins etc. will be the best to take this table to a finish. 

 

Joy

 

     "The joy you're experiencing is not only contagious,

          it is necessary and urgent and irresistible."   

                                                                                       Wesley Morris

 

This quote, which I found on writing instructor Dee Mallon's blog, got me thinking about the power of joy. It (and the growing evidence outside) reminds me of the unstoppable push of springtime, that the poet Dylan Thomas so vividly encapsulated when he spoke of "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower".  As the turning of the earth toward the sun sets huge, life changing processes into motion, so do our feelings generate similar profound shifts in our actions and the course of our lives. We have all felt the sharp prod of fear and its effectiveness in motivating us, and we also know intimately the dark pull of desire in its myriad manifestations. It is easy to focus on these inborn and potent responses as the major triggers of human behavior and dismiss joy (and its inescapable corollary, love) as secondary when facing the challenges of life, but I believe that without the presence of love and joy there would be no life at all. It is the irresistible spring from which we draw the willingness to participate in this material existence, and the fuse that drives our flowering.

I read somewhere that the entrances to Shinto shrines are guarded by twin demons representing fear and desire. One must walk past them to reach the inner sanctum of the temple where the gods with real power can be addressed through prayer and offerings. This is a clear illustration of the ability of those emotions to rule our actions and prevent us from reaching the deeper, stronger, more expansive parts of ourselves. As small, weak animals without strong physical defenses, and as social animals that must adapt to the competing demands of those around us, it is not surprising that fear and desire are always our foremost reactions....the ones that we recognize and react to immediately. Safety and status are always what we are scrambling for, but neither provides enough nourishment to satisfy us. Like young plants unfolding through darkness toward the sun, we feed upon joy, on beauty, on love, as we reach for lives that matter and endeavor to become part of that which is larger than ourselves.

Much has been made of "nature red in tooth and claw" and lives that are "nasty, brutish and short", and truly, life can be hard and death is always a breath away. Without joy, though, life will not be sustained. We kill ourselves or allow others to kill us. It takes quite a lot of energy to continue to live and even more to craft lives that mean something to us inside. That visceral energy comes from something mightier but more subterranean than fear or desire. Joy is more necessary, more urgent and more irresistible than either. It is life itself, and fortunately, it is contagious.

Autumn under

Making a cloth to go under Lisa's autumn runner has turned out to be an endless job. My plan was to make a quilted sixty inch square. To start with, I needed a specific shade of gold to go with the wheat on the runner, and of course there is no commercially dyed linen that works, so I had to dye it myself.

I had a long piece of high quality white linen about twenty-five inches wide. Before cutting it into panels to make a large square, I dyed the cloth. The first immersion was in myrobalan, which yields a soft butter yellow. It turned out to be a pretty color, but not quite gold enough, nor dark enough. The second dip was in fustic and chestnut combined. This was much more successful in both color and value.

Then I sewed the panels together thinking any seams would disappear under the eventual quilting. There was only enough fabric to make panels 59 inches long, so right from the start I was going to end up with a smaller cloth than I had hoped. After layering the linen on top of a flannel middle and a muslin back I marked a one inch grid over the linen and safety-pinned the three fabrics together. I figured I could manage straight lines with my sewing machine if they were held together firmly. ( A moment while I roll my eyes at my own optimism. I can't sew a straight line to save my soul.)  It took two days to mark and pin the cloth. Now I am plowing through the seemingly endless lines of machine sewing trying to keep them as straight as possible. It is tedious and frustrating. Maybe long-arm quilting is worth the extra money.