Happy Thanksgiving!

Seems like only last year that Thanksgiving and Chanukah were the same holiday! Here's a quilt I made for both!

Blogged here. You still have time to make one for Chanukah!

(Crocheted turkey pattern is free, here. Scroll to the bottom.)

Orphan Paper-Pieced Blocks

Back in the 2000's, I designed a foundation paper pieced Aleph Bet (Hebrew alphabet), based on calligraphy principles, and made a couple of quilts from it, like this one wallhanging (about 34" x 28"):

I put the e-pattern for sale on my website, and have received images of quilts made from it, including this one by a wonderful quilter named Wayne:

I also used the pattern to spell out 'Shalom': 

Very gratifying! Designing such a complex quilt meant lots of experimenting and discards. I wound up with a stack of leftovers, including these:  

Here's a closer look at the aleph (first letter of the Hebrew alphabet), front: 

And the back, with most of the paper pattern still in place, 

I stuffed the orphaned blocks in a file, where they sat for about six years, until this week, when I decided to participate in a Hanukah boutique at a local temple.

I took two orphan hamsa blocks that were not fails, added borders, quilted them, put on a hanging loop or sleeve (respectively), and voila! 

 The second one has a button eye in the center:

They're quilted with gold metalic thread, and are about 10" square. 

Here's what the hamsa pattern looks like. It's one of the most complicated patterns in the set. 

That's 22 pieces! Most of the letter patterns have far less!

(If you're interested in making your own, the epattern is sold in my Etsy shop,  as well as from my Judaiquilt shop, here.)

A Quilting Life is a Healthy Life, With Footnotes

Being a, um, mature quilter might mean your most innovative work is ahead of you!
Check out: http://us.cnn.com/2012/06/19/health/enayati-aging-brain-innovation/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook

What's more, crafting is good for you, and this has got to include quilting:  http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/25/health/brain-crafting-benefits/.

It's all good! News item of the future: Quilting will be proven to be better for you than going to the gym! (If it can happen to wine, it can happen to quilting: Check out: http://www.latintimes.com/drinking-wine-better-going-gym-according-scientists-yes-261496).

This is especialy true if you keep your sewing machine in the basement and your ironing board in the attic. After just a few log cabin blocks, you'll be cardiovascularly and intellectually enhanced, exhausted, and certainly deserve a nice glass of wine!

Quilting Mystery Book Review - 'Knot in My Backyard'

This new mystery is Mary Mark’s second – I loved her first, Forget Me Knot, and this one is just as good. Her heroine is Martha Rose, an expert quilter, hot mama, Weight Watchers recidivist, Los Angeles Jewish woman of a certain age, who solves gruesome murders in part by refusing to be silenced by the hunky men who desire her. Vivid characters and authentic settings make the book so much fun  - I learned a lot about the Los Angeles River, undocumented homeless people who live off freeway overpasses, the thorny politics of fancy private schools, bikers, Israeli falafel places, and much more that makes up the improbably diverse landscape of LA. There are even quilting tips. I could totally relate to Martha in so many ways, plus she hates to cook – we’d both rather quilt -  so we’re truly kindred spirits. Highly recommended!  

Finishing Other Women's Quilts

It's a wonderful thing when you can finish quilts started long ago by other people. Sometimes you're not just the second person to work on an old quilt; there can be more.

This story starts when my best friend Sue and I went to vintage fabric and fashion show, I think in Santa Monica, CA, in the early 2000's, and we came across this stack of blocks:

 The design is often called "Dresden Plate," with petals and a central circle. These appeared to be cut from 1960s -80s fabric, much of it shirting, much of it related to surfing.

 Above, note the word "Bend". It appears a few times in the quilt. What on earth could it have been from?

 Love that rainbow plaid, above, not to mention the leopard skin.

There are palm trees and beaches galore, plus airplanes.

I was dubious. All I could focus on was the godawful black thread zig-zag that held the petals down, around the outer edges of each plate.  What's worse, in the centers, the purple shadowed through the yellow. Technically, it was pretty bad. But Sue, with her amazing eye for good design, astonished me by falling in love. She saw something more. Maybe it was details like this:

Whatever, she was so enthusiastic that I didn't even try to dissuade her. She bought the stack of 18 blocks. We talked a lot about how to set them, but didn't get around to it.

Eight years later, Sue was diagnosed with brain cancer. She had an immediate surgery, and its short-term result was that her formidable math and spatial abilities vanished overnight. We decided to finish the quilt together, and for the first time ever, she needed my help with simple measurements. We set it with purple sashing that matched the purple blocks' interiors. The blocks, of course, weren't all the same size, so we had to do some funky fixing. Don't look too close.

We shopped together for border fabric, and at the time, there was a quilt book (I can't remember the name) that had vintagy blocks with a red-and-white polka dot border. We were both entranced. Plus a couple of the quilt blocks actually red-and-white polka dot leaves.

So we bought a bunch of this fabric to border the quilt:

Sue believed in using good fabric. 

She got sicker and could no longer sew. When she was very sick, and could barely talk, she asked me to finish the quilt for her. Of course I assured her that I would. "No rush," she whispered.

No rush. Sue was all about compassion. She gave generously to every charity that crossed her path.  Her job was as an occupational therapist, working with children. At one point during her long illness, I got sick with something miserable but non-terminal. She called me every day to see how I was doing.

Asking me to finish was the last thing she ever asked me. A few weeks later, she was gone.

I didn't rush. Two years later - which was a couple of weeks ago - I felt ready. I added the borders, and quilted the whole thing. Whenever I worked on it, whenever I had it open on my floor or table, it didn't depress me at all - in fact, it made me laugh. The colors were cheerful, the details wacko, and the juxtapositions priceless - partridges with the word "sun," calicos with groovies.

For the backing, I was planning to use the same red-and-white polka dots, but I didn't have enough. I added some black fabric from Sue's stash  but the polka dot fabric bordered by black looked appalling. 

Sue always cared as much about quilt backs as front. Before I met her, I used to throw anything I had on the back of my quilts, but Sue had taught me to use the good stuff, whatever the price. 

So  I headed for my local quilt shop to see what they had in an extra-wide fabric.The first fabric in the wide pile, right by the store entrance, was this: 

Shortest shopping spree ever. That was it. I knew Sue was smiling. 

So here's the finished quilt, from the front: 

Next week, I'm going to ship it to Sue's older daughter in New York, who is very excited about it. To me, this quilt is of course a little bit messy, and a little bit sad, because Sue couldn't finish it, but it's also so joyful and funny, and crazy. 

On each the two plain purple blocks, I quilted a shadow plate. 

I like to think that each one is for each of my two collaborators - Sue, and the unknown person whose sense of humor way exceeded her technical skills, who cut up the family wardrobe and put these blocks together in the first place. 

 

I hope Sue's daughter thinks of it as a group hug, from all of us. 

Nov. 9 2014 Update: I put the quilt in the mail today. As I walked outside with it, I spotted a huge monarch butterfly on my patio, not a common sight. It flew off. I'm a believer.