Passover Masks; I Couldn't Help Myself

Passover is April 8. With the world in the throes of the COVID epidemic, public health authorities and rabbis agree that people should stay home, and connect with farflung loved ones at the seder via Zoom, Skype, or whatever. 

I don't have any matzoh in my house yet - but of course, I always have plenty of matzoh fabric. So this morning, I broke away from making (somewhat) normal masks for friends and family; and I made these, just to make myself laugh.  First....

(I buy matzoh fabric here.)

The next mask covers two plagues: Frogs and hail. 

(The dots could also be boils and/or cattle disease; the black area could be darkness. That's five plagues in one mask!)  

The third mask, dancing skeletons, is good for the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn; not to mention the new plague we are enduring.

And finally, if your virtual seder guests don't see eye to eye on politics, send these to the loquacious ones in advance.

 BUT SERIOUSLY

• My easy pattern, which I used to make the masks above, is HERE.

• My roomier mask tutorial is HERE. 

• My resource page with hospitals around the country asking stitchers to make masks for them, and links to many more  patterns, is HERE. 

And whether you celebrate Passover, Easter, or anything else, please, listen to the public health experts; stay home; don't invite guests, except the ones you already live with. That's the best way to save the world. 

More Passover and matzoh fabric projects are in the word cloud on the upper right. 

Eat Chocolate, Drink Coffee. English Paper Piece the Trash into Holiday Decor

It is not an exaggeration to say that English Paper Piecing (EPP) is one of the most addictive quilt-related activities I've ever undertaken. It wasn't enough for me to do EPP with fabric, first to make quilts, and then to stitch polyhedra.

But then, a couple of years ago, after my DH caved to supermarket displays (always blame the DH!) and bought a bag of Lindt Truffles (no financial affiliation!) I found myself fascinated by the wrappers.  One thing led to another...at parties, I started following people around to collect their wrappers....and here are tutorials for two projects made from them. Both are sparkly, fun, and therefore perfect holiday decor!  These truffles come in so many colors, you can do Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza color schemes, and more! 

PROJECT 1 Small Pentagon Bowl

Detailed directions are in my polyhedron book, but you can don't need it to follow this tutorial. You will need a regular pentagon shape. 

1. Cut out six cardstock pentagons. Mine are 1.75" high, from the middle of the base to the tip, a good size for this particular chocolate brand.

2. I'll break it to you gently: You must eat six chocolates: One for the base, five for the sides. It's your creative duty. (OK, you can share the burden with someone you love.) I was at Costco yesterday and one of the generous ladies was handing everybody 3 Lindt truffles! Pass her twice! 

3. Wrap each cardstock pentagon with a candy wrapper.

As you fold to the back, figure out where you can trim away extra.

Cut same-size pieces from more foil - I used a holiday coffee pouch and glue-sticked the pentagons to the backs. They don't wrap around.

Lay everything out. 

Zigzag the pieces together on the sewing machine. As my book explains in detail, I first go around the central piece,  attaching the sides; then sew up the seams between all side pieces. I used silver metallic thread in the top.... 

...and the bottom....

I put the inside of the foil coffee bag on the outside, on one panel. I think it creates a sort of spaceship effect. 

Wasn't that fun? If you're still have leftover wrappers, you can make....

BOWL II: Hand-sewn Hexagon & Pentagon Bowl

This bowl's a little bigger. This time, you have to drink a lot of coffee as well as consuming six chocolate truffles
The first step is to cut six cardstock pentagons, same size as the project above, 1.75" in height. Wrap each with a truffle wrapper. 

The back. Cut away excess. 

Instead of covering each of the backs with another foil piece,  I tried mashing down some of the backs neatly. (Don't iron, for gosh sakes, the wrapper will melt and attack you with toxic fumes!) Then I stitched a star in silver metallic thread, from the front, to hold everything down.

The smushed backs looked pretty good! 

For the center, you need a hexagon whose sides are the same length as the pentagon's sides, 1.25" in this case. Cut it from cardstock. 

I wrapped one side with a coffee bag piece cut a little larger than the hexagon, so I could bring the edges to the reverse side. 

And in the opening, I slid another coffee bag piece the same size as the hexagon. 

Laid out the pentagon pieces around the hexagon base, good side up. 

Unthread the sewing machine. Use an old needle. Set the machine for a long stitch, even a basting stitch. Send the central piece through the sewing machine, poking more-or-less equidistant holes all the way around. Do the same with the side pieces. 

Hand lace everything together with sturdy thread. I used upholstery thread. 

Hand stitching is a bit awkward. I tried lots of different stitches to see what I liked best. They all worked fine, a whipstitch, a lacing stitch, whatever you like. 

And it's done!

Backside. 

Side view.

But wait! There's more! More chocolate wrapper - and broccoli bag - projects are posted  here. My favorite of all is this hand and machine sewn dish on that page and in the photo below.  

It cuts the sweetness with nutritional information! The base and square pieces are from the bag that holds the candies. The shape is a partial truncated cuboctahedron, and it's another project from my polyhedron book, available on etsy, here, for immediate digital download, or in paperback from Amazon, here. 

Happy Thanksgiving! Start Making Paper Dreidels!

Happy Thanksgiving! I don't want to panic you, but it's time to prepare for Hanukkah (starts December 2)! A couple of weeks ago I showed off some freemotion-quilted fabric dreidels. They don't spin well, but they do make good decor, as well as shelter for chocolate coins, dinosaurs....

...and even smaller dreidels...

Now Hanukah looms even closer, making this the perfect project for avoiding stores on Black Friday. If you don't have time to quilt, you can use the same approach to make paper or cardstock dreidels, which spin much better than the button-stem kind if you use pencils with flat sides: 

Above, left to right, they're made out of: an old stationary folder, a box of souvenir Singaporean dried fruit, a birthday card, and a Cheerios box. Closer: 

Alas, with the Cheerios box, I made the unfortunate mistake during construction of ignoring the  Pampers ad on one side....

...Because who doesn't want to think about poopy diapers while spinning dreidels? (or while eating cereal? Cheerios executives: Are you really that desperate?)

Moving from the ridiculous to the sublime...the nicer the paper you use, the better the dreidels. For the next two, I used the 2006-2007 Women of Reform Judaism calendar, with each month a gorgeous cutout collage by Atlanta Artist Flora Rosefsky. 

When I wrote to Flora to ask for permission to show them, she filled me in on the background. The collage series was initiated in 2001.

"...I still enjoy creating new collage work, using the same 'drawing with scissors' method, but now sometimes add mixed materials like fabric, trim, and ephemera (found paper)."

 Find more of her intoxicating work at www.FloraRosefsky.com.  

Of course, you can create your own collage, and then turn that into a dreidel. To make cardstock or paper dreidels, create a pattern like the one below (basically five squares, and four equilateral triangles). Score all the interior lines, cut it out, then fold and tape the outside. Or cut extra tabs along the sides of the bottom triangles, and at one end of the squares. Then you can use a glue stick or hot glue the tabs, from the inside, to close it up. (The right and lower tabs are not necessary for fiber dreidels.)

More information about artsy dreidel construction is in my recent blog post, here. And a word from our sponsor - if you don't feel like drafting it yourself, my instant download booklet for stitching fiber art dreidels- including patterns and Hebrew letters in three sizes, and step-by-step instructions - is available for $3.00 from my Etsy shop, here. 

Wishing you a healthy, happy Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and everything else you celebrate!  

I made some little dreidels. I made them out of scraps. They spin like...

(Sung to the tune of "I had a little dreidel")

I made some quilted dreidels...

...I made them out of scraps (batik scraps, stiff interfacing scraps, gold lamé, etc.)...

...And when I tried to spin them....they spun like cr#p. [End song.] My husband, a physicist, explained that because the buttons and beads are not glued together, they dissipate the energy from the spin, not to mention angular momentum, a phrase I always wanted to type. Oh well. On the brighter side of physics, the lids open and shut...

...one of them has a bobbin at its base....

 ...and inside, you can store small toys...

...chocolate coins and/or wrappers from chocolate coins of yore...

...even (bellydancer) coins... 

....or stuff another dreidel inside!

My little dreidels really fit inside the big ones (because the stems are flexible and dissipate energy) - they're matroyshka dreidels!

I had so much fun making them, that I sat down and wrote up a tutorial, much of which is free below. (Commercial interlude: For people who prefer a clear printout, an inexpensive 13-page e-pattern is now in my etsy shop.)

The Hebrew letters on a dreidel are a nun,

..gimel

hei

...and shin

...Representing the sentence "nes gadol heya sham," "a great miracle happened there." Wikipedia's dreidel basics are here.

Making these didn't take long - I made two in maybe three hours, no shopping required. Below is the plan (developed in hindsight. When I set out, I had no plan).


These are the measurements for the larger dreidel. You can go bigger or smaller. (I made a 1" version, and it was very tricky to sew, but doable. Watch your fingers!)

You'll need small amounts of stiff fusible interfacing (product names include Pellon F2F, Peltex, Peltex2, or Fast2Fuse).

1. Decorate a piece of interfacing that's big enough to later subcut the pieces shown in the diagram above. A minimum to decorate would be about 8" x 10". Or, scrounge up smaller pieces from which you can cut the individual pieces above.

I started out with a bunch of leftover 4" x 6" fiber art postcards backed with fusible interfacing. I fused a streaky batik on as background, then zig-zag stitched fabric strips and ladder yarn on top. 

Then I scribbled over them variegated thread....

and/or gold thread....

[What I should have done, but didn't in my first dreidel: Line the other side. If you want the boxes lined, this is the time to fuse or glue-stick a nice piece of fabric on the reverse side, and cut it even with the edges of the top.]

2.  Cut the individual shapes from the embellished interfacing:  

• 5 squares that are 2.25" on each side; 
• 1 small rectangle for the tab that's 2.25" long by about 3/4" high; and
• Four equilateral triangles (or near-equilateral triangles) that are 2.25" across (= same width as the squares), x about 2" high (height needn't be precise - isosceles triangles work too.)

3. Sew the squares to the triangles. I recommend a satin stitch, though in this case I did a loose zigzag. The satin stitch is stronger. 

4. Do the lettering. Draw out the Hebrew letters - if you have a dreidel around the house,  you can copy those letters, or mine, or those on Wikipedia here. (My pattern has some nice letters) If you choose lamé for the letters, fuse light interfacing to its back, setting iron at the lowest possible temperature for fusing, or you will melt it.  Or use a less fragile fabric, and add fusible web to the back. Cut out the Hebrew letters  Fuse or gluestick one to each square. (You could also paint them in!)

5. Stitch around the letter. I used gold metallic thread:

6. Join the four panels, including the seams that will bring the shape into the third dimension. If you've machine-sewn bowls before, you know this is tricky - go slowly. (You can also hand-sew.)

Line up the panels, tips pointing away from you, next to your machine, in the correct order (follow the diagram above, but in reverse, since they're upside down). Set a wide satin stitch and starting from the bottom tip, stitch forward. This is simple...until you get to the point where the two squares diverge.

7. Gently bring the two corners closest to you a bit towards each other, and take ONE more zigzag stitch, just catching the edges with your needle. Bring the corners closer, and take another stitch, catching both sides. By the second or third stitch, the corners will demand to snap together! Encourage this, pressing the two square sides tightly together. Stitch forward, slowly and carefully (Do a couple tiny straight stitches at the end). You'll have this: 

8. Next, sew the two pairs together thusly: 

9. Cut out the D-shaped tab from extra interfacing - as shown in the diagram. it has the two bottom corners rounded off. Satin stitch it one side of your last square, the lid. The tab really helps hold the lid in place, and the dreidel in shape.

10. Then satin stitch the opposite side of the lid, to the top of one of the panels. Before you attach it, you might want to quilt a spiral into it, like I did! (Pretend the handle isn't there yet.)

11. Satin stitch all the way around all the remaining unattached raw edges, including the lid and tab. (Pretend the tab is on top of the lid in the photo below. Do what I say, not what I did!)

12. The last crucial seam is shown below, running from the dreidel's lowest point, up to the beginning of the lid. You must sew this seam by hand.

For my large dreidel, I did a hand whipstich from the outside with thick variegated thread - you can see some of it on the right edge, below, where the thread is white. On such a scribbly messy dreidel it's not a big deal.

For the smaller dreidel, I hand stitched the last seam with a pink Bottom Line thread, which is strong and thin, so the stitches hardly stand out (on the right, below).

13. A stack of buttons makes the handle. I used 6-strand embroidery thread and a needle longer than the button stack. I sewed up and down through the button holes, a couple of times to get it firm and (relatively) straight.

I also added a button in the front, to use with an optional loop that goes under the handle. 

They work not only as gift boxes, but as hanging decor. I do feel bad that they don't spin well. I couldn't think of a secure way to install a stiff rod in the lid - if you have ideas, please do share!

If you attach a bangle bracelet, they can double as a wristlet. The one below is not large enough to hold a cell phone, but certainly lots of chocolate coins! (It's posing on my backyard rhododendron;  but you could also hang it on a Christmas tree!)

If you can make them from the tutorial above, have at it! I'd love to see pictures. If you'd like more guidance, the e-pattern includes illustrated step-by-step directions, the pattern in three sizes, a one-piece version that's simpler than the one above, a nice Hebrew font for medium and large size dreidels, and embroidery letters for the small dreidel. Find it here. Email me with any questions!