Raven and Sparrow

Winter's table

Unlike so many in this country who have been braving arctic cold, our winter so far has been unusually warm. We got enough of a frost to kill the nasturtiums, but most of the other annuals in the garden, like geraniums, are still alive and trying to bloom. Thus we were quite surprised to see it begin to snow this morning. It isn't sticking much, but it has fallen non-stop all day, making my winter table setting much more appropriate. 

There are only four of us sharing this dinner so I set us up in the middle of the table to maintain intimacy. As usual, I put the larger flower arrangement at the far end to stop the eye and kept the centerpiece very small. I was looking for something quiet and dark so I turned to the woolen scarf I bought for Lynne's winter table. She had given it back to me and I often find it very useful for evoking a wintery feeling. It's circular patterns and subdued colors remind me of the way ice forms in puddles when the frost is heavy.

I have a dark blue cloth that covers the whole table, but the rough linen square (left over from Joel and Becca's wedding) looks better with the scarf, and the shiny corners of the bare table add more life to the setting. Off-white gray banded plates, white chrysanthemums, and silver accents keep it from being too heavy. I especially like the way the little vase in the empty space of the clear glass tray makes a quiet interlude that feels like winter night to me.

It's good to gather with friends when winter makes the warmth of their companionship especially welcome. 

 

 

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.

What color goes with your dishes?

I was supposed to teach a class on tablesetting this weekend, but since nobody has signed up for it, I guess it's cancelled. I have been teaching natural dye classes at Gail Harker's Center for Creative Arts, and she graciously allowed me to schedule this one-day class in a subject close to my heart. My idea was that everybody would bring a plate or saucer from their own dishes and we would do as a group what I have been doing for Lynne and Becky: come up with some ideas for adapting their specific patterns to the seasons with varied linens. To this end I have been collecting linen swatches for quite a while. I've thought of them as possibilities for undercloths and as color kickstarters. Actually holding a plate next to this spectrum shows clearly what tints and tones look right with it. Most of these are actually available on-line, although there are some problems....at 56" wide they are too narrow for use on most tables without sewing, and they are linen. I prefer linen myself because it is a beautiful natural fiber and I dye with it all the time, but I know some people who would rather die (haha) than iron and that makes linen evil. (Hint: use lots of starch...put it in the rinse water and never dry completely. Damp ironing is much easier.) The variety of colors that linen comes in puts commercial tablecloths to shame. I have wasted much time on-line and in stores looking for undercloths and coordinating textiles and found them to be limited, sleazy and expensive. In my searches though, I have found some linen purveyors that have proved to be really useful to me. All of the little swatches on white cards come from fabrics-store.com. They have been sending swatches for free and that's why I have so many, but they are switching to larger pieces for which they plan to charge. That is the policy of Gray Line Linen, the source of the big swatches at the top. Gray Line is a little more expensive and their shipping is a lot more, but their quality is a little finer, I think. Fabrics-store has lighter, nicer, and heavier linen choices than the ones here, but their middle of the road line has the most colors and that is what has been fun for me. Denver Fabrics and Fabric.com are other sources for linen of all kinds, and of course, if white will do, Dharma Trading has the cheapest. There are some linen sellers in the UK that make my heart pound, but the shipping has been too high for me to ever try them.

I was hoping that other people would find it fun to play with dishes and colors like I do, but I won't find out this weekend. I'll have to think of something else.

P.S. The class has been re-scheduled in October, so we'll see what happens then. 

Post mortem

In the week since I set and photographed Lynne's seasonal tables in her dining room I have had time to think a little about what I made.

I was tired of viewing endless pictures of people's tables that were often beautiful, but unreproduceable. It seemed like the dishes were the stumbling block...too expensive to purchase willy nilly, too cumbersome to store in large quantities, and either plain to the point of dullness or highly dictatorial in style and color. I wondered: if I were restricted to one pattern, how would I use it to express the individuality of gatherings I wanted to make special? What could anyone wishing to use what they have make table settings that set the stage for specific occasions and made them memorable? I decided to reach outside my own collection of dishes and address the question with unfamiliar patterns. I am fortunate to have friends and family who support my experiments and so I planned to show how the very different plate styles of three willing participants could be adapted to reflect the seasons, which are exemplars of change. Lynne, my sister-in-law, was my first guinea pig; I used her Royal Doulton china as the common denominator in the four settings shown.

If you can't change your dishes, textiles are the obvious way to carry and vary color and pattern on your table, but full scale tablecloths have their own problems of fit, availibility and maintenance. Try shopping for affordable tablecloths of the right color, the right size and the right material to elicit the moods you want your table to express. I am always looking in person and on line and have despaired of reliably finding any but the most basic colors. My solution is to make or find a couple of plain colors that work well with the dishes as a base, and then design or purchase a series of smaller, more variable runners or squares to layer on top and set the tone of color or pattern, sort of like a scarf can change the tone of a simple dress or blazer. The accent cloths are easier to handle and wash, cheaper (unless you count time) and highly flexible. 

Using the base cloth/accent cloth theory, I chose two colors of linen that I thought looked good with Lynne's dishes and made full size tablecloths that fit her specific oval table. (Ovals are all different.) They will always be useful with these dishes, no matter what Lynne chooses to layer on top of them. I know she already has some lace and eyelet pieces that will look great with either. Then, I made or collected the accents whose history and progress I have shown throughout the year.

So (...finally, what's with all the exposition?) how did it go? Overall, I feel like I succeeded in evoking the four seasons for Lynne. I liked all of the tables when I finally saw them put together and felt like my accent pieces worked the way I envisioned. Whew.

However....I am always looking for the visual combinations that open a space within my heart...the feeling hard to describe but so definite that invites a deeper response, a wider, more intuitive relationship with all of the threads and elements that underlie the scene. I think evoking this feeling works upon the hearts of everyone who gathers in the space, confirming their value in the group and encouraging the flow and interactions of the occasion. Of the four settings I made for Lynne I think only winter comes close. 

Its a little ironic that the best table required the least work, in that the runner that set the tone was a purchased wool scarf. (Smaller cloths can be drawn from a much wider field than regular tablecloths.) It was a matter of luck, I guess, but the color was right, and the concentric circles of the pattern immediately evoked ice on puddles and the swirling of winter winds in my mind and those associations carried through clearly. The centerpiece was also very important. It took quite a while to find twigs with the right shape and fineness to make the transparent cloud of naked branches. In fact, it wasn't until the leaves fell this autumn that I recognized that the snowberry bushes on the path to the beach would work. I spray painted them gray and originally intended to add evergreens and maybe white roses, but once the lights were on it was clear that austerity would be more powerful. The other thing that I didn't really control was the size of the thing. I worried about the proportions of the vase (had to be white and opaque to hide the battery case for the little lights) but found no other good options and so it just became what it was and I think it worked better than any of the others.

So, now I know what I need to work on as I turn to Becky's table:

Better photography (depth of field, white balance, other photographic blah blah)

Better centerpieces (not sure what this means, but hopefully clarity will emerge)

Better control of proportion and detail (how much or how little of the various elements)

More storytelling.  

Thank you so much for the kind comments and encouragement. I really appreciate having a supportive forum in which to work these projects out.

Lynne's table - Autumn

Here is Lynne's table set for fall, using the maple leaf square and the blue undercloth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lynne's table - Summer

For Lynne's summer table I used the same soft green undercloth as for spring, layering it with the butterfly runner I took so long to make. The butterflies add most of the interest, so the flowers and candles are pretty simple.

Brass and glass

This week my sisters and I took our mom out to celebrate her 82nd birthday. We went to the Chihuly Glass Museum at the Seattle Center, and then out to lunch at the Pike Place Market. Lisa took this picture of Erin, Mom and me outside the restaurant (Etta's Seafood....absolutely great).

She also took this picture of the glass ceiling in the Chihuly Museum...can you believe I didn't take my camera? I've never been a huge fan of Dale Chihuly's glass, but the museum is a distinctive experience, and very enjoyable. The best part, of course, was spending time with my mother and sisters. I am very lucky to be part of a large (Mom, Dad, and seven siblings), close, intact family. 

A big family can be quite a resource and this was proven rather casually by an outpouring of brass candleholders. I was lamenting a couple of posts ago that I couldn't find what I needed for Lynne's table, and that was all it took. Lisa and Mom between them came up with all of these choices.

Brass candleholders anyone? More fruit from the spreading rootlets of love and family.

 

Fear of finishing

This picture is from last spring when I was making oval undercloths for Lynne's table. Now everything I made for Lynne is finished and ironed. I'm trying to gather the other bits and centerpieces to pull the tables together. That has proved more difficult than I was hoping. Why is it so hard to find something specific when you shop? Wander blithely through a store with nothing in mind and stuff calls from every shelf. Go in for something you know you have seen somewhere and it is nowhere to be found. One item I need is a couple of small brass candleholders. I can see them sitting on the shelf of some low end import store...I know I have seen them there, but not anymore. Nothing is made of brass these days. 

Its not just the last minute details that are slowing me down. I can feel the fear of failure clinging to me like concrete. I've worked for a long time on this stuff and now I have to bring it together...and then document it. In someone else's house. With them watching me. There is always this final struggle to finish and present something and it is never clean and easy, but with my graphic design jobs I usually have an outside deadline that cuts through the inner hand-wringing and makes me (at last) just get it done. This time the whole project is self-regulated, so I can dawdle as long as I want. Uh-oh. 

Details, details

One of the details I have been working on for Lynne is napkins and napkin rings. I have undercloths in two different colors...the light green and the navy blue, and I originally thought I'd just provide napkins to match. When the accent cloths began to take shape those two colors weren't quite lively enough for summer and fall, so I added napkins in darker green and rust for those seasons. Getting these things square was a challenge, not to mention my perennial trouble with mitered corners, but now I have made so many that I am starting to figure it out. 

All along I had been wondering about napkin rings. I hardly ever use them because I change my tables so often and never allow the time to make or buy them. I just rummage in my ribbon box and hope for something suitable. For these settings though there is as much lead time as I want to take and it seems a little unfinished and slap-dash not to attend to this design point. I stuck with ribbon, but made actual bands with snaps and decorated them with buttons. The grosgrain ribbon makes a good base for this and comes in many colors, although not enough when you really get into the nitty gritty of matching. Only the autumn ones had to be made from linen scraps because the ribbon was close without being close enough, if you know what I mean. I used buttons to pull more colors in and add that dimensionality that beads and buttons provide. You could really get into this if you liked beading, and the ribbon can be embroidered as well, but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, so I just did a little. I hope they will work as I imagine they will.   

Winter is coming

Making table linens is great, but I'm glad I'm not restricted to my own efforts every time. For Lynne's table for winter I will use a woolen scarf from Asian Eye. I have had it in my closet for a while and thought of it when I was looking for dark blue things. The colors, design and fiber go well with Lynne dishes and give them a wintery feel different from the stuff I am making for the other seasons. I have used wool on the table many times and have found it to be as washable as other fibers, with a little care. This scarf is reversable; I am planning to use the dark side (Luke, I am your father...) but could change my mind at the last minute. I like the uneven edge and the concentric circles remind me of winter winds. If Lynne doesn't like it on the table she can wear it.