Raven and Sparrow

Plodding into spring

After the upheaval of Christmas I was finally able to get Becky's half-done spring runner back on the table and proceed with the weaving of the second half. It took three days to get the verticals re-ironed and pinned down again. The arrangement of colors is a mirror of the first half, so I didn't have to spend nearly so long trying to decide which strand to weave in next. I was very strict about keeping the outside "rails" exactly 15.75 inches apart, so I didn't have to take it apart half way through and do it over. As usual, my efforts still defy regimentation.....wobblies are inevitable in my work I guess. I have decided that this is charming and on I go. I have to admit that Becky's Spring has become quite tedious. I originally thought I might use this woven part as background for another pattern, but now that I see how much time it has and will continue to take I have changed my mind. This will be what it looks like, essentially. I hope I have enough of the light green linen to make a border...if not I will have to think of something else. Anyway, its time to bring this table project to a close. It has taken long enough. Now that I have the basting in (red threads) I plan to do running stitches in both directions.  

Still weaving

It has been weeks since I posted last and this is all the further I have come on Becky's Spring. First of all, choosing the pattern of colored strips was very time consuming. As I worked my way down the ladder, the wider strips got more and more bunched up and wrinkled so when I approached the end I took it all apart (keeping the chosen order intact) and made those strips a little more narrow. Weaving again, I measured the width and found that I lost an inch (an inch!!) from middle to end. I took it apart again. Now the strips were getting well handled and the turned edges unturned. I had to re-press each strip as I wove it. This time I measured across every time I added a strip and measured lengthwise to be sure the strips were at right angles to the long sides. Sometimes after I had pinned the strip I found on the next measurement that something had moved and the width again was shrinking. Now the width is uniformly 15 3/4 inches, although looking down the length shows little wobbles in the lengthwise strips. That is too bad. Basting this down is the next step. Hopefully I will be able to get it sewed together without too much distortion.

This is only half of the runner. I still have to repeat the process on the other end. Weaving such a long piece has turned out to be much harder than the 10" square I did for Dee's Hearts for Charleston (duh). It has allowed me to integrate the colors I want into a single entity, but whew...I hope it will be worth the effort.  

Setting the warp and starting the weave

Finally I have made enough strips to start Becky's Spring. I know I still don't have enough, but I wanted to try out my colors to see what works best before I go to the trouble of making more. I cut (and pieced) a backing cloth from handkerchief linen, and stay stitched the edges to keep it from distorting too much. (We'll see about that.)  Then I arranged the lengthwise strips, trying to maintain balance but not strict symmetry. The variations in widths seem interesting, but I am so glad I didn't try curves. I am afraid that my medium weight linen will end up being too heavy, but will have to deal with it if it is....I don't have a choice.

Adding the strips in is a very slow process. I have never been a weaver and I didn't have a clear idea of how the various widths and colors would work together when they were woven in. What I am getting surprises me. The darker greens look much deader than I expected so I will have to use lots of the light yellow-green. Fortunately I have plenty of scraps of that. Keeping everything straight is pretty hard.

I'm not sure if I like it or not.

Stripping

Having decided to make Becky's spring runner entirely from strips, I have been busy reducing largish pieces of fabric to ribbons. The robin's egg blue linen is the cloth I bought specifically for this project, but I am also using scraps from other projects, which feels satisfyingly thrifty to me. I wondered when I saved the remnants of previous work whether it would worth the space and fuss and it turns out that it was. I have celery green from Lynne's table and grey from my own, all dragged out of my "maybe someday I'll find a use for this" drawer. Some of the pieces are odd shapes, but I try to get as much out of them as I can, pulling threads to give myself a straight cutting line.

I am making strips that will become 1/4", 1/2", 1", and 2" wide when they have passed through the bias tape making gizmos I purchased in those sizes. They make the process of turning edges on skinny lengths of cloth doable. I shudder to think how hard it would be to get them straight with a ruler. I am making them all so far on the straight of the grain, having abandoned the idea of circles and curves.

My original idea was to make the "warp" lengths all blue and weave the other colors crosswise, but as I cut I find myself making a few thin long strips in green and grey, so maybe there will be some streaks of those as well. I can't envision exactly how the colors will intertwine, so I am making enough different strips to give myself some options once the weaving actually gets underway. That will be a while....stripping takes time.

These are the little bias tape makers....my local fabric store ladies raved about them and they are indeed that rare commodity, a gadget that works.

Weaving on my mind

I've been working on Becky's spring tablecloth pretty actively, if you count mental exertion as work. Having decided to use woven cloth strips to make a background, like we did for Dee's Hearts for Charleston quilt, I tried to imagine how I would adapt it for use on the table. I thought my HforC block with its turned edges was less free and fun than some of the blocks made by other people, but the need for easy washing and long wearing makes using raw edges uncomfortable for me. More than that, I fear starting out too freely, because most of my work seems to leap out of my control sooner or later anyway. This will be a long, skinny cloth...90 x 16 inches...using a technique I'm not very familiar with. As I contemplated how I would cut and manage the strips I kept thinking of wayward measurements and uneven edges which usually plague me under simpler circumstances. I referred to Jude's Feel Free videos (what a great resource) but finally decided to keep my strip widths uniform and turn my edges. When Grace suggested nests as an image I sidetracked for a while into adding curves to my cloth weaving, but that added a whole new set of technical issues, and when I actually sketched some layouts I decided it just wasn't worth it. The good news is that I have actually begun to cut the cloth into strips, using the drawn thread method to keep them as even as possible. It is comforting to lay hands to cloth at last.

Becky's table...taking stock

After months of distraction I am getting ready to tackle the last season for Becky's table...spring. Her dishes,(Keralia by Arabia) with their grayish ground and heavy black/brown banding, lend themselves more to autumn and winter than summer and spring. Plates with strong character often are difficult to adapt to various settings but my challenge is to represent all four seasons with the same dishes, so I must work with these. I was lucky in finding a kantha cloth with the right color background for summer and a wool scarf for fall. The winter cloth I made is documented here in the blog. (I never have had good luck linking to my own posts.)  For the spring cloth I settled on the robins egg blue cloth in the background, a change from the white cloth I usually start with. I thought I could discharge a pattern onto the blue but I have also been wondering if applique might work better. I need to keep the colors springy without compromising the relevance of the plates. Cleaning the studio yielded the dark brown print, a gift from my quilter sister-in-law Lynne. There isn't very much of it but both sides look good. Using it in the right proportions will be the trick. I have been making very short runners lately but this time I think I need a long one...90 inches. That means piecing even the blue, which reminded me of the woven square I did for Dee's Hearts for Charleston quilt. I am imagining woven insets in this long runner, which would allow me to ration the brown effectively. It will make a more graphic pattern than I had first envisioned, but it might be a good variation, given the other cloths I already have waiting. I am going to plan the woven pieces and then let the runner tell me where to go from there.

Now, where was I?

Taking a deep breath here. I spent the weekend teaching a class in shibori and indigo at Gail Harker's Center for Creative Arts. It was planned to coincide with the Mood Indigo exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum and on Friday I went down for a guided tour of that show.

I have taught indigo as a component of all my natural dye classes, and usually include a little time for play with clamps and folds and rubber bands. This was the first time I have seriously tried to teach the basics of shibori including stitched and bound resists. I agreed to do it months ago thinking that it was far enough after the wedding that I would have plenty of energy available. That turned out to be unrealistic, but the prep had to be done anyway. Of course, once I met the class and got going it was fun. I have never had a dud class and this one was full of great people. Although  there are things I will change if I teach it again I think it went pretty well over all.

These are just a few of the samples I made during the class. 

Now, with that completed and the wedding over I can get back to my own projects. I abandoned Becky's table after finishing her winter cloth and still have one more - spring - to make. Unfortunately, the studio is in such chaos (oh, and the house too) that I will have to spend some time mucking out before resuming. It does feel good to have more time again. Happy Solstice, everyone.

The winter of my discontent

  Becky's Winter is hemmed and pressed. I happened to have an undercloth of the appropriate gray on my table so I spread it out to see how they look together. Many things are working well, but at the risk of losing my sense of proportion, I am not happy. The edges, which I have been struggling with since I began, are more wobbly than ever before. This, after two days of measuring, pressing, re-pressing over a straight-edge, pinning every half inch, pressing again...etc. I tried using freezer paper to stabilize the edges and did a test with heat bond hem tape, but after some initial hope, neither one worked worth a damn.  Pressing over my 48" straight-edge ruler looked very promising... hand smoothing the fabric over the metal, steaming and waiting for the fabric to dry before removing the ruler... it looked great at first, but after the hemming was finished it was as wobbly as ever. I am very disappointed. I honestly don't know what else to do. This is not a problem of inattention, but something is eluding me. I went back and looked at my older cloths and none are this bad, although the linen ones are wobblier than the cotton. I conclude that at least part of the problem is the cloth, but I'm not sure how to fix it. I have thought of backing it with harem cloth, but that will be a very lengthy process by hand and will result in little dimples...the cloth will become a quilt and it might not make any difference. I may have to try it though, just to see what happens. Maybe more starch will help. I already starch like crazy when I lay out the pattern (also done with a straight edge) and when I am ready to mark the edges. I know cloth is a flexible medium, but I also know others are able achieve neat borders. Why not me?

I think I am especially disappointed because this cloth has been a departure for me and has achieved the feeling I was looking for when I started the project. A Northwest winter day is what it suggests, and seeing it on the table makes me pretty sure it will work as a tablecloth...enough detail to be interesting up close, but perceivable essentially in bands of texture and color to give an impression of a rainy day. So many times during the process I thought it might be ruined or unworkable, but it kept coming through. I would have liked my craftsmanship to measure up, especially since it is a gift.

My grumpiness has not been helped by a new, worse round of flooding in the old house. It has been raining like the dickens and the driveway is a river. This time I wasn't caught by surprise so everything is up off the floor, but the water is deeper this time and more rooms have been flooded. We lived in that house for seven years and never had a flood but now there have been two in about a year. Insert bad words here.

Again, I reach for my sense of proportion....these are small problems in the scheme of things, everything could be much worse. I am so lucky everyday...even this one. 

Winter decisions

I am reaching the end of embroidery on Becky's Winter. I've done the water and the large drops in the sky. My final plan was to accent the falling rain by doing running stitches at the same angle as the waxed raindrops. I spent all afternoon putting in three short lines and I am about to change my mind. I found when I waxed the rain onto the cloth initially that keeping straight lines across such an expanse was really hard. Now, even when I draw with a straight edge, the running stitches are not straight. These three aren't too bad, but they have each been done at least twice and they are the easy ones. Also, all those stitches across the cloth will pucker and make it harder for it to lie flat. I don't think it will be worth the effort. Does anyone have any suggestions? Would backing the cloth make it easier to handle? I am just about to decide that the cloth is done. Well....after mitering and hemming and all that.

 

Working on water

The last couple of weeks have found me working on the water portion of Becky's Winter. I was never really happy with the wax marks I made to approximate the watery portion of my scene. The rough and repeated dyeing needed to get the color on was a blessing in a way because it broke the wax down and allowed more blue from the indigo into the marks. Still, it definitely needed more integration and that is what I am trying to do with the embroidery. I don't have a plan, so I spend a lot of time looking at the cloth trying to decide where the next "wavers" will go. I think it is working, but I still have much to do.