Gay Tables for War Rations

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23618, 30 March 1940, Page 6 (Supplement)

Gay Tables for War Rations

—SAYS NIKI OF PARIS TfOOP rationing doea not depress the French housewife, who goes to it with a will to make her table more gay and inviting than ever. TypidJd of the fruit and vegetables that are bo plentiful in France are the embroidered motifs on the tablecloth in the sketch. The same design of the luscious, colourful fruite of the soil is shown on the apron and on the dish-towel too. So realistic do these hand-worked "vegetables" appear when sewn in brightlycoloured Bilks against the buff-coloured linen, that it is as good as a. "hny diet" meal to look at them! The vegetables are worked in the colours they really come in, brick pink for carrots, cense rod for radishes and tho leaws and greenery all in the succulent true-to-life colours we know so well. With so many city dwellers evacuated from their larger town houses to more modest country cottages, ornate table linens seemed out of place; and so, during the long ''blackout evenings, many an hour has been put to good purpose in the making of table linens more suited to an al fresco mode of living. ... j j A certain witticism is expressed in the table-cloth design in the sketch, with its radishes, beet, spring 01110ns, mushrooms, carrots, turnips, green pea pods, tomatoes and asparagus. These are scattered all over the cloth in 110 regular pattern. The border on the kitchen towel and the stripes down th.> apron are in bright red and green. Matching table napkins could be made with a stripe of a different colour lor each member of the family. In New Zealand they would make an inspired gift for a week-end hostess or for anyone who has a seaside or a country cottage.