Raven and Sparrow

Lavender time

I was casting about for the right combination of tablecloth and flowers for an upcoming dinner when I looked at my garden and realized that the lavender has bloomed. Problem solved! One of the first tablecloths I made with natural dyes is still among my best and the only flower that looks good with it is lavender. (I'm sure I have shown it many times, but in the spiral of experience, here it comes again.) I made it with my usual combination of tannin-based dye (myrobalan), wax, and over-dye, with embroidery to set it off. The use of logwood gray and logwood purple make it akin to the runner I am currently working on for Lisa's autumn table. Logwood purple (from the South American tree) is a soft blue-purple color that is unfortunately fugitive. Adding iron turns it into a silvery gray that I love and increases its light-fastness. I often add log purple to a stronger log gray mixture to nudge it towards the blue. That's what happened in the center of this cloth, where there is a whisper of lavender compared to the grayer background color and edging. I found out by covering the bluish center square with a large centerpiece that a lot of life goes out of this cloth if you can't see the middle motif, so now I use something small and clear in the middle, if anything at all.

There were six around the table on a beautiful summer night in lavender time.

Half embroidered

I am plugging away on the embroidery for Lisa's autumn runner. Using chain stitch mostly I am filling in the shapes of the stylized wheat ears because the painted myrobalan used to dye them turned out too dark...a little like snot, if truth be told. Covering them completely makes me wonder why I went to all the trouble to paint them and wax them. I could have dyed the cloth and then marked the the wheat in with pencil or marker and saved myself a lot of work, but the goldish background means I can make the embroidery a little more open which increases the texture of the stitching, and I like that. I am thinking about how to handle the center, and wondering if I need to add a shadow line around the wheat. It is even lower contrast now so maybe a shadow would sharpen the images. Embroidery does lift the shapes into the light.

Onward autumn

I re-rolled Lisa's autumn runner and dyed both ends again, so there is less variation in value from one end to the other. On both ends the outer layer got marked with dark streaks, one end black and the other end rusty red. I think it had to do with the wax that detached in the hot bath picking up color and then re-sticking to the exposed cloth. This picture is the dried cloth still wearing its wax. I was happy with the relative value of red and gray, but the exposed water stain lost some of its golden quality. Then I took the wax out.

It was hard to remove and it took a lot of the color with it, especially the gray. The yellow myrobalan wheat ears were more old gold than butter yellow, and not very distinct. The center motif, in contrast, held its colors better and the logwood retained the purple cast I tried to impart. 

I think the next step is lots of embroidery and a backing, because there are some thin, worn spots in the fabric.

 

Double-ended dye

Instead of over-dyeing Lisa's autumn in plain gray I decided to do a double color by dipping one side in quebracho red and the other in logwood gray, leaving a bit of the yellowy water stain in the middle. At first I thought I would just drape the folded cloth over the edge of the pot and let the color wick up, but then I remembered the pvc pipe rounds I used to transport the table runners for Joel's wedding (three years ago on Sunday). I rolled the cloth on the pipe, covered the exposed top with plastic wrap to keep it wrapped and keep it damp and stood the pipe in a dye bath of q-red. It was immediately clear that wicking would not happen in any interesting way, so I stood there and rolled the pipe around the pot, jigging it to make a more gradual transition from dark bottom to paler middle. I kept the temperature lowish to help preserve the wax.

Then I made a pot of logwood gray and dyed the other end, starting with pale gray and then lowering the liquid level in the pot and adding more gray to make the outside darker. It took quite a while and was somewhat tedious because I was trying to compensate for lower dye temperatures with extended dyeing time. When I was done the red end looked darker than the gray end. I unrolled the cloth and let it dry to see what values I really had achieved (judging a cloth in its wet state is a good way to be disappointed). In spite of the rolled cloth being only about four thicknesses deep, the inside was markedly more pale than the outside. (Duh, but I had expected more dye uptake in the middle.)  I actually like the pale end better, but the cloth hasn't been washed, so will be more pale even than it seems now, and the wheat motifs won't show well without more contrast. I think I need to re-roll the other way and dye both colors again. The wax has lifted onto other parts of the cloth and the pipe, so I still let it get too hot despite my care. I am re-mordanting now and will try again with the double colors soon.

Center color

My original color idea for Lisa's autumn runner was gold on gray, but after staring at the center motif for a while another possibility presented itself. I mixed up some logwood gray with a little thickening, added a dash of logwood purple, painted one side of the circle, and then did the other side with quebracho red. (I think both logwood and quebracho come from South American trees.)

It can be hard to judge how well painted dyes will bite and these colors both dried a little pale, so I sprayed the circle with mordant and re-applied the colors. Then I waxed over the whole thing to preserve it against future manipulations. Now the cloth is back in mordant.

Autumn wheat

After a long time of inactivity Lisa's autumn runner is moving forward rapidly (at least rapidly in my working terms). I prepped the water-marked linen/silk blend by cutting the piece as accurately as I could and stabilizing the cut edges with machine stitching. Then I mordanted the fabric in alum acetate, allowing about six days for it to sit in a plastic bag in the fridge so the mordant could bond thoroughly with the fabric. This was one of the things Michelle Wipplinger taught me when I worked with her. We did tests and discovered that there was a visible improvement in dye "take" if the mordant had time to sit in the fabric before dye was applied. To begin getting the design down on this piece I silk-screened my circular motif at the center of the runner in myrobalan (tree from India) thickened with gum tragacanth. I over-did it with the squeegee and ended up with an indistinct jumble on one side of the design. I am not always a good screener. Then I painted the wheat ears with a brush and the stems with a ruling pen. Also poorly. I ran out of energy way before the job was done, but had to continue while the fabric was still damp so the dye would adhere as strongly as possible. Wetness in the cloth keeps the chemical processes going, according to all my sources, so I covered the whole thing with plastic and let it sit for a couple days.

When the myrobalan had a chance to bite, I went over all of it with wax to preserve what will eventually read as butter yellow (I hope) in the finished piece. At this stage the myrobalan looks brownish because I applied a pretty strong mixture. Painted dyes tend to be weaker than dyeing in a pot, and I want these to resist the colors to come. Waxing went more precisely than painting, thank goodness. I think the center motif will be sharper because of the wax, but we'll see. There is always something about wax that is more engaging than the plain cloth. I wish I could leave it in, although it looks even more brown than the paint.

The next thing is to over-dye. I was originally planning to make it all gray, but now I'm considering other possibilities.

 

Picking back up

When I finished Becky's table settings I already had some ideas percolating for a seasonal series for my sister Lisa. In fact, I was kind of excited about my plans and thought I would be getting to work right away. Well. I did decide immediately that I would use purchased fabric for spring and winter, leaving summer and autumn to be made by me. I could see them in my mind, but could never get them out of there and onto paper. Every time I sat down at my drawing table I ended up with a dull, spiritless design that I knew I would never go to the trouble to make. I made other nuts and bolts tablecloths (that's when I was playing with French seams), thinking that if I just let things percolate I would come up with a way to get my ideas to work, but that didn't happen. After a while there was just nothing. I let my cherished plans go.

So, back to the drawing board (literally). I made a blank scale drawing of a runner that would fit Lisa's table and just looked at it while I thought of my sister, of autumn, and of her dishes. Wheat ears came into my head...golden wheat. I've always admired the shape of wheat. I also like the aspect of autumn that wheat symbolizes...the replete satisfaction of harvest so nicely evoked by Keats in his poem To Autumn: "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun....". 

There. A design.

I'm not sure about this, but the fact that I immediately moved to begin says that my reservations don't matter. I will try to make it. 

I'm planning to use my linen/silk blend that has been water-marked from the flood in my studio, and my circular silk-screen. The fabric is in the mordant.

 

Dream returns

The tide of love has washed across the world and returned, collecting and focusing bits of imagination, design skill and artistic execution into something larger than themselves. Mo Orkiszewski (itscrowtime.wordpress.com) from Sydney Australia orchestrated this wave, sending strips of satin cut from an old wedding dress to fiber artists in Australia, North America and Europe, bidding them to embellish the fabric in their own ways upon the theme "I dream of world where love is the answer". Slowly the pennants drifted back to her across the oceans, changed by the efforts of the people into whose hands they had been entrusted. Mo added her own extensive skills to the gathering and amalgamation of these highly varied pieces (including a beautiful selection of tiny talismans) and produced a soaring installation that evoked a proud ship under sail, flying the flags of love. I am so grateful to have been included in this project and so touched by the exquisite individual expressions of a universal principle gathered into a clarion impossible to ignore. 

Now, the crescendo has been reached, and the tide is receding. The installation is disassembled and the pieces are wafting back across land and sea to the hands that took them from scrap to statement. Mine came home yesterday, wrapped in clouds of tulle and accompanied by bits of branch still bearing stars from the larger piece. It has changed during its absence, as travel changes us all, and carries the vibrations of its experience which has enhanced its meaning a thousandfold. Thank you Mo. Thank you everyone.

Banner finished....almost

Download IMG_0501

Hit this download for the song. It was the only way I could figure out how to attach it.

 

Well, it's done, except for the baby's name. That won't be bestowed until she is born, so I left a blank space on the title panel for later addition. This is a long, awkward thing that may not measure up to the time invested in it, but it feels good to be finished in time. (Come on, baby!)

 

 

 

Banner bits

After many an hour of embroidery and handwork, I have got the components of my lullaby banner almost ready to go. There are nine pink panels with the lyrics to an old song embroidered on them, and six rough unbleached cotton strips that carry the chorus. The lyric panels are backed with the same cotton to make a frame for the pink parts and to give them more substance. I originally meant to fringe the white edges like the chorus strips (not quite finished), but then I decided that would be too much fringe and turned the edges instead. You can see from the one that is showing the back side that I didn't allow enough fabric to make a double turn when I cut and so had to hand overcast all the edges. (It probably would have been too bulky anyway.) I used Jude's (www.spiritcloth.typepad.com) glue stitch to attach the pink to the white. Now I plan to string them along a length of bias tape so they can be hung in the baby's room. I may still need a title strip, but I want to put the baby's name on it and that is still undecided. I will probably put a blank piece in for now.

I am not at all sure about this project ...maybe it will look half-assed and silly, or be annoyingly cumbersome. I do know that it wanted to be made from the moment I thought of it and so I have tried.