A Sashiko Tablecloth Finish.

For my birthday in 2023 a friend worked this table runner, which I loved. It was part of a suite of Sashiko designs, called Galaxy Dreaming, from Indigo Niche in Queensland. There were two square panels in addition to the runner and I thought it would be good to work the square panels as placemats. 

My friend got on board and made me two for my 2024 birthday, and I bought another six panels to make a full set. 

The designs are beautiful and a joy to work. It became obvious the squares were too large for placemats so I decided to join them into a tablecloth, and bought another runner. 

I have been working these over the last two years between other projects. They are ideal ”grab and go” projects. All you need is a panel, one hank of thread, a Sashiko needle and scissors, ready in a pouch. Once I got to the second last panel I made an effort to push on and finish.

Until then, I had assumed I could arrange the panels either side of the two runners. When I did so, it wasn’t straightforward.

I tried several configurations on my extended table, deciding in the end to go with a variation of my original idea.

To make it work, I needed to buy some matching indigo fabric to add a border - and to fill the gap in the centre.It took a while to purchase the fabric.

There is only one shop in Adelaide with a range of indigo fabrics for Sashiko and I had to wait for their latest shipment to arrive to get a close match. The colour variations in indigo are astounding. The shop owner tells me she has 1000 bolts of blue - all different.  Only one bolt worked. It is a linen/cotton mix and the panels are cotton. The mix will, I hope, stand the test of time.

My quilting friends would be unimpressed with my construction techniques, but I did measure carefully, and use a chalk marker to get straight lines. I had hand- hemmed each panel to the marked border, but they were not identical in size; nearly, but not quite.  I accommodated the difference in the overlap as I stitched it together by machine.

I considered taking it to a laundry for pressing, but settled for spreading beach towels on the table and pressing in situ. That worked. I then tried the tablecloth out for a family dinner. It worked very well, generating discussion.

Time then to wash it. I put in into the washing machine on a short, cool cycle on a day with no rain forecast and a lot of wind. It came off the line bright, clean, crisp and robust, the fabric plump and consistent. 

I decided ironing would achieve little, folded it into eighths and rolled it for storage. 

In spite of the simplicity of Sashiko, this has proved complex. In the final stages I began to think about how design traditions are melded. These designs were inspired by Aboriginal stories and translated into a Japanese stitching tradition. Embroidery, like other crafts and art forms, has evolved in this way for millennia. I have spent a lot of time exploring such transitions in Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Mexican, Ukrainian, Indian - and several other cultures. This tablecloth confronted me with a contemporary cultural transition. 

I got in touch with Sue Howie, the designer of the panels. She has been generous with information about her design processes. There is also  a lot of useful information on the Sashiko Australia website.

I offered the tablecloth as a trigger for discussion in the first of our World Embroidery Study Group meetingsof 2026. We used it for our morning tea and the discussion ranged widely over Sashiko, design, cultural awareness with lots of examples and stories.

A great asset - and excellent start to our year of World Embroidery Exploration.