Raven and Sparrow

Foxglove in indigo

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I finally got set up to dip my foxglove tablecloth in indigo. I thought it would be pretty quick to do the dipping, but the size of the cloth meant I had to get out my big kettle, scrub the earwigs out of it, revive the outside propane stove and gather all the indigo accoutrements. It took a while to get those ducks in a row, but at last I was ready. You may remember that my favorite test cloth only took about forty seconds in the indigo to get a color I liked and hoped to replicate. Ha ha. Changing volumes of liquid always throws those calculations out the window. The actual tablecloth also started out a darker gold than the test cloth because the myrobalan formula I painted it with also changed with the larger volume needed. Anyway, there I was dipping my big cloth briefly and absolutely hating the color. Pea green! No! More blue. I stood there all afternoon, dipping and waiting and dipping and waiting, trying to get the green to go more blue. (You have to wait about twenty minutes between dips to allow the indigo to fasten itself to the cloth.) At last I got it blue enough, but then it was much darker than I had first envisioned. Oh well. The best laid plans and all that.....

After a couple days of curing I took out the wax....another trying chore.....and now feel okay with how it turned out. The many indigo dips corroded the wax enough to result in a batik-y effect even on the painted leaves and the fabric paint integrated much better with the dye than it might have done. I went back in lightly with white paint to emphasize the lips of the flowers since the indigo muted them too much, but mostly this is what I got. The next thing is to embroider the dragonflies. I am thinking of adding a checkered border to keep it light and summery.

Dye painted on

After a day in mordant and two weeks holding in the refrigerator, the foxglove tablecloth has been painted with myrobalan, a natural dye made from trees that grow in India. I tested this a while ago and followed my notes from that experience, but the test was on an eighteen inch square and this is fifty-seven inches. You wouldn't think that keeping the proportions the same and changing the volume of dye would yield different results, but sometimes that happens. The gold color on this cloth seems quite a bit darker than my test squares even though the formula was the same. I am reminded that testing is never as precise as I expect it to be. The next thing is to let this set under plastic for three days or so to allow the dye and the mordant plenty of time to lock into the fibers. Keeping it damp helps that bonding to continue. Afterwards I will let it dry and see what value I actually attained. Then...into indigo.

Fox wax

Lisa's summer foxglove table cloth has been waxed and is now ready for mordant. It took a long time to wax over the previously painted bits. It might not be necessary because the paint will shed the dyes that are coming next, but after much thought I decided I liked the way waxing over paint helped integrate it with the colors to come on the trial piece I made. Other trials that got painted after the wax had been removed seemed more garish. The paint looked uncomfortable amid the dyes.

The waxing went pretty well, but there were a couple random drops that I couldn't integrate into the design. That is totally normal and usually I just ignore them and go on, but this time I wondered if more dots would help. I ended up adding semi-random dotlets around the flower stalks, just for fun.

Painted foxglove

The paint is on Lisa's summer tablecloth at last. I started with the green leaves in the first week of July, and now all of the flower painting is done, pressed and set as well. I practiced quite a bit on the smaller square samplers, but still found myself winging it in some places on the full size cloth. Even with the addition of an acrylic medium it was hard to apply the paint smoothly to the untreated linen, and the medium definitely added stiffness to the hand, but it is done. Yay. Hanging it up and stepping back gives me the best vantage yet for evaluating the design and I see some minor things I would now change about the pattern, but overall it is okay.

The next step is waxing, then mordanting, painting with dye, and dipping in indigo. There is still a ways to go.

Quiet time

As these months of restricted activity have stretched on it feels like a time set aside....like a placid pool in the onrushing river. I miss seeing people, especially my family, although I do visit them occasionally and carefully, but I also feel some satisfaction in days that belong to me. I didn't realize how much time I was spending preparing for and cleaning up after my social life until it disappeared. Almost every weekend involved going somewhere or receiving people here, with many weeknights also engaged in one way or another. Now it has fallen away and I am lonelier but more free. Time is malleable and can be shaped more thoughtfully. I have watched myself decide what my days will contain and then evaluated whether I achieved what I imagined or liked it if I did. I don't want this time to go on forever, but it has offered gifts for which I am grateful.

So what am I doing with my time? In the morning I do projects around the house. I am almost done washing all the windows in the new house indoors and out, a few every day. I weed and water the gardens, sweep the terraces and scrub woodwork. I helped Mike spread and compact a load of gravel on the driveway. In the space between the old house and the new, long neglected and weedy, I've started pulling grass and blackberries and honeysuckle to tidy up and reveal new possibilities. The amount of work is overwhelming in this place, but I don't think too much about the big picture, I just do what I can every day.

In the afternoons I paint on my tablecloth. I am about three quarters done with the green of the foxglove plants. It is very slow and I can't do it for more than a couple of hours at a time. After the green is on, I will paint the flowers and then set the paint with my iron. After that....wax. I thought at one time that I would paint the foxglove after I had waxed, over-painted with dye and dipped in indigo, but as I worked with my trial squares I decided that doing the paint first and waxing over the top pulls it more cohesively into the whole. I am keeping the leaves as uniform as I can while still allowing for some shading and movement by using combinations of only three colors: dark green, light green and fawn brown. Its not the most skillful painting, but will be enough to suggest the plants in a lively yet graphic way (or so I tell myself).

I am still working on my patchwork runner, attaching open weave linen scraps among the lavender wisps. I am not sure if i looks all that good as a whole, but I really like seeing how the shredded linen takes a new form as it is couched down to the cloth so I keep doing it.

Nothing is exciting, or seems worthy of commentary, so I don't have much to say, but I am grateful for these still, quiet days.

Back to squares one

After setting my blue patch runner aside for a little while I decided to remove the lavender silk wisps and begin again. Hazel suggested I start with a smaller area and work from there, so I picked out a low contrast "moon" that I had dyed on very lightweight cotton and attached it with glue stitch. I went through the usual fret about turned or raw edges. The patch seemed to melt into the blue background better with frayed raw edges, so that is what I chose. I hope it will hold. Once sewed on and encircled by a corona (sorry) of running stitches, the moon asked for companions so more pale gray squares with faint circles on them will be added. I still want to put lavender wisps somewhere, but what size, what shape, and what kind of attachment has not so far been revealed. I am like the traveler that crossed the country driving only at night. All I can see is what is immediately within my headlights. I am not sure what my destination will look like.

My other project, Lisa's Summer, is making no demands on my tolerance for uncertainty, but does require patient, repetitive work. I am transferring the foxglove dragonfly drawing to my linen square with a Pitts pen (warm gray III). I find that the underlying drawing I made from my giant computer photographic collage still has some enigmatic areas that will trip me up when it comes time to add color, so I trace and modify as I go. I find that I can't do it for too long. I have more stamina for waxing (the next step), but there is something about the drawing/tracing that tires me out. Still, I am inching forward.

Summer tests

Lockdown days are busy, but somewhat blurred and similar, and I have come to feel a little blurry and indistinct myself. I don't have much to say to anyone.  Krista Tippett in her On Being podcast did a little riff this week on the energy we absorb physically from each other and the effect the separation is having on our vitality, and I feel like that provides a key to the slow and low tenor of my days. I'd be interested to know if others have noticed this too.

I have been working on my patchwork base, so cutting lots of blue squares and sewing them into nine-patches has taken some time. I am almost ready to join them into a long table runner about 15 inches wide and...how long? I'll lay them out and see what works best.

Bringing up an indigo pot was the next thing for Lisa's summer cloth tests, but when I went to make the base stock I found that my chemicals had spoiled (or, in the case of lye, hardened into an intractable ball) and so I had to send away for fresh ones. For a moment I considered trying a more natural method, but decided that my heart isn't really into the process so much as the outcome and I know how to bring up a chemical pot quite reliably, therefore why change? One Dharma delivery later my pot was on and I was able to dip my myrobalan-painted test pieces in blue. 

The results are interesting. The three examples are the same pattern drawn in wax only, drawn with gray fabric marker and waxed, and drawn and then painted and waxed, with wax finally taken off them all. I am pleased with the way the painted example came through the processes of indigo and wax removal. A little freshness was lost, but the paint is well integrated into the cloth. I like the delicacy of the gray outlines, but they may not be enough to bring the gray plates into active conversation with the design. I meant to keep the background green as light as possible so the first two trials were in the indigo for the shortest possible time. On the last one I doubled the submersion time and got the darker background. At first I thought it was too dark, but it is growing on me. I like the teal quality of the color. Of course, this is all just approximate....when I stuff a full size cloth into an indigo bath it could turn out quite differently, but at least I know what ballpark I'm playing in. The next step is to paint the two without color and refine my skills and color choices before going on to the big cloth.

Picking up pieces

Back before Christmas I mordanted three test pieces for Lisa's summer cloth. One has a fragment of the proposed pattern drawn on with marker and then painted with fabric paint and waxed, one
has the drawing without the paint, and then waxed, and the third is just the pattern drawn on with wax. They have been waiting in the fridge for me to clear a space to work on them, and finally I have. Today I took them out and painted over them all with the same concentration of myrobalan, which gives a buttery yellow. When it has had a chance to soak in (three days or so), I'll dip them in indigo and then remove the wax and see what survivies.

In the evenings I have been sewing my blue and black squares into nine-patches as a way to ease myself into the project prompted by Jude's blog. Since she has put her tutorials back onto her blog I have been watching two or three posts a day and marveling at the ease with which she amalgamates her vast scrap collection into compelling "stories", using the fabric like paint. (Hazel is also a master combiner....check out the pink ground on her latest.) Watching Jude and then actually taking up fabric scraps in my hands with the intention of making them into a picture reminds me of how literal I am. When I think back over what I have made I see that I always want to make my point clear. My method of working usually requires a fairly detailed plan and pre-made pattern (see Lisa' summer).  My stuff definitely evolves as it forms, but always the idea comes first and I judge my success by how well that idea comes through. I think being a designer drilled into me the necessity of clear communication, but I see Jude communicating clearly but much more organically and I admire that. I will not be able to replicate her delicacy because I am not her and I am working with much heavier, stodgier material, but I am trying to imitate her more open way of working, always wishing for the depth of feeling she is so good at expressing. Whether I will be able to maintain my enthusiasm in the face of the discomfort of this new path remains to be seen.

Finish and start

My computer problems in January prevented my posting of Lisa's finished autumn runner. It is hard to capture its golden shimmer in a photograph. (Click on it to see the whole thing.) It is also proving to be hard to find accessories that work well with it. It is so low contrast that most of the vases and candles that I have tried have been too harsh. I am stalled at the moment while I look for what I need, online of course, and who can really tell that way?  

I was making good progress on cleaning up my studio when Jude's large cloth musings struck a chord. I decided suddenly to make a runner from my scraps (of which I have many, mostly heavy linen in solid colors) based on the comforting light shining from the house to those coming home on a winter evening. That is all I know right now. I usually plan my projects way more thoroughly than this, but I have decided just to start and go where I am led. I turned all my scraps out onto my recently emptied table and picked out everything blue, black, gray or purple. I have cut out some squares and that's where I am.

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.