Last week, my family celebrated spring’s arrival with a St. Patrick’s Day party. We do this every year, and it’s one of my favorite get togethers. I decided I wanted to showcase my glassybaby collection (small that it is) with flow blue china. Bill gives me a piece of flow blue for nearly every holiday, but especially at Christmas. I don’t collect a particular pattern, but I like older pieces, especially Devon, Dahlia and Touraine. As for glassybaby, show me one I don’t like. I think their appeal is the blown glass, and the fact that the company gives ten percent of every purchase to charity. I’m into the greens now probably because it’s spring. I bought hidden moss yesterday. I can only afford them in ones and twos. The ones shown below are hide & seek with cherish on the far right.
I made this spring table setting by using my old pieces interspersed with glassbaby candle holders. I also made a moss basket. You can barely see the plates in the above photo. I didn’t get formal china when we married almost 25 years ago. Instead, I asked for Spode Blue Geranium many years later when we could afford it. We barely had two nickels to rub together when we said our vows.
I started with half a flat of blue violas and another half with light blue ones. I planted the teacups with the darker ones with the idea of putting them in the garden a couple of days after our party.
We’ve been nearly without violas this year because the weather was so cold for so long. The ones I found were so grown together that I really had to tear them apart to get them out of their six pack and into the teacup. You need to pull the roots apart anyway to tell them to grow. Don’t worry that you’ll hurt them.
You’ll need two plants per small teacup. I think I stuffed four to five plants into the gravy boat. Since I was planting them outside in a couple of days, I knew they would be all right. Plus, you want that overfilled look for a sense of abundance. Violas and pansies are very forgiving plants.
Fill the top of the teacup with potting soil, or with moss if you want that look. Moss holds in moisture, but like I wrote above, these won’t be in containers very long.
Speaking of moss, tomorrow, I’ll show you how to make the moss basket too.
What an inspired idea. I assume that you don’t need to worry about drainage since you are planting them outside shortly after? I am not a collector by nature, but I do love flow blue, and am happy to have a plate that used to belong to my grandmother. It’s not in great condition but it has a lot of sentimental value.
We have a round table so a setting like this wouldn’t work – but your blue and blue is so beautiful it would be worth buying a new (long) table just so I could copy your art!
Lovely table decorations and so simple.
Had to comment on anything to do with my feast day, right? Blue and orange is one of my favorite combos and your table setting just proves it even more, my friend.
I need to learn more about flow blue china. It’s so pretty!!
Super combination Dee.