Hanukah Gift Ideas: Paper and Fabric Judaica to Make, Sell, or Fling

Is it a bird? Well, birds are involved....

Is it a plane? No, more like a Frisbee - if you fling it, it flies, but not well enough for a game of  Frisbee golf. Wait, I remember! It's one of the yarmulkes (little Jewish hats) I brought to last week's artisan fair at my nearest synagogue, Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center!

I rarely do fairs - it's nearly impossible for a fiber artist to charge enough for the hours we put in. Nobody wants to pay $60 for a potholder. But someone I adore asked me -  and here she is, Ellen Dinerman, my son's kindergarten teacher (two decades ago), and an accomplished artist who makes extraordinary sculptural jewelry (sold here. No financial affiliation!)

I hoped the event would be a good opportunity to downsize my stash of Judaica seeking forever homes. My table:

Closeup of the top matzoh cover:

Underneath were more matzoh covers. Some, like this one, can do double duty....

If you don't want to use it as a matzoh cover, you can stuff an 11" pillow form into the back...

(The fun fabric above, featuring Maneschewitz wine and other Passover props is sold at 1-800-dreidel.com. They also sell the trompe l'oeil matzoh fabric.) My pile also included challah (bread) covers and mats, like this one, stitched from kaleidoscopically pieced fabric....

....and miscellaneous fiber art, like this wall hanging (now in my Etsy shop.) The Hebrew letters spell "Chai" for "Life!"

 Yarmulke section:

I make them from whatever fabric is feeling spiritual to me - starting at 12 o'clock and moving clockwise in the photo above, there's Mighty Mouse and Hebrew alphabet hats; a Harry Potter Bukharan style kippah; Pikachu; a hat pieced made from necktie fabrics; chile pepper fabric,  and way in the back, chess fabric. Closer:

The perfect kippah for a bishop! For shoppers who look at my hats and say, "Ha! I could make those myself," I heartily agree, and point to strategically-placed copies of my yarmulke-making book (which I sell online in paperback and digital form.)

Ellen gave me a second table for a craft activity with the Sunday school kids.

The supplies are for making paper hats that can also do double-duty - turned over they make festive candy dishes, and if you fling them with a twist, they can fly much better than the fabric version - comparable to a decent paper airplane. Patterns for these hats are in my OTHER yarmulke-making book, "Yarmulke-gami: E-Z Paper Fold Jewish Art Hats."  

I brought a stack of hat patterns for kids to cut out and decorate, printed onto cardstock. 

I made the patterns in my graphics program.  The round hat folding pattern has the Temple's sisterhood logo in the middle. Underneath the hat pattern is a pyramid-folding pattern.

I made about 60 copies of this page. I also showed off a row of samples.

Closer: One of them is a sponge-painted hat, folded into what I call a "Simple Star."

Here's another sponge-painted hat, this one folded in my "Dimple Star" design. Can you see the difference? This star is rotated so it's points don't line up with the darts. 

This basic hat is made from an acrylic painting on a piece of cardstock. 

The next is napkin decoupage. 

Here's my 'Diamond Star' folding pattern, made from textured scrapbooking cardstock.

Below left is a hat made from a map, and on the right, one from a scientific paper. The latter is colored and folded into my "Chickens Over Mt. Sinai" design. (also looks like a hamantaschen.) I twirled a decorative rose from the same paper.

This page was from a wildlife charity catalog.

I channeled my inner third grader to make a sample for the day's project. (The sequins were a test of whether a temporary glue stick holds them well. It doesn't.) 

Along with glue sticks, I provided the kids with lots of multicolored paper, stickers, markers, crayons, and Chanukah paper with dreidels and stars. (No sequins.)

The most popular supply turned out to be these: 

And here's a terrific hat made by a 6th grader who used them well! 

Plus several kids made pyramid gift boxes from my folding pattern.  Here's one I made as a sample:  

Good for holding gelt. Or, they serve as handle-free dreidels - put a Hebrew letter on each side, then toss it in the air. Of course, this being a tetrahedron - aka a "triangular pyramid" - when it lands, you have to wonder - which letter wins?  Three of the four sides are up! Maybe the one facing down at the table? This particular pyramid was folded from a foil coffee bag, with stamped Hebrew letters glued to each side. (I LOVE polyhedra!)

And here's a pyramid made and decorated at the fair by an authentic 6th grader.

Of course, with the pyramid theme, they may fit in better for Passover. My original idea involved covering the outside with brick fabric, and putting a frog inside:

But back to the present(s). I gave each kid three chocolate kisses to insert before sealing the last fold.  I didn't think of bringing candy until the morning of the event - and then, the only kisses I could find at the drugstore were packaged for Christmas, in red and green as well as silver foil. So we all had a good laugh about that. I wished I'd thought this through earlier, in time to buy chocolate coins to put inside. 

Thank you, Ellen, for inviting me to this fun event! I downsized my Judaica stash a bit, and had a blast shmoozing with other artists, shoppers, and creative kids!

P.S. I just saw the following fabulous wrapping paper at my local independent bookstore - Vromans in Pasadena. Wouldn't this make great paper kippot? 

Mini-Quilt Challenge: Connecting With Hard-to-Love Colors

A personal question: How do you feel about this color scheme?

It was the palette for Curated Quilts magazine's recent "Connections"  mini-quilt challenge.  My first reaction was "ugh!"  They're calling that color in the upper right, in the picture above, "mustard." And the middle bottom is named "moss green." But it struck me how similar they are to the colors of my late unlamented 1960s childhood kitchen, avocado green and harvest gold, which themselves are euphemisms for "overripe avocados" and, I am sorry to say, "upchuck tan."

Still, I liked the "connections" theme. Plus, the whole point of challenges is to force you to do something new, and often, uncomfortable. So I made this 10" square piece:

Everything that isn't white is an applique. The star on the upper left hangs out beyond the edge (thanks to a yellow felt backing):

How did I get to stars? The first things "connections" suggested to me was people holding hands. That made me think of linked paper dolls. Then I thought about linked 5-pointed stars, with touching points. So I grabbed some scrap paper (the informational paper that comes with batting), and did a back-and-forth fold,

 ...and folded that strip back-and-forth into squares...

 Drew a rough star....

 Cut it out, leaving tips intact...

 Unfolded it and out came this....

I was intrigued by the shapes between the stars, so I repeated the exercise, but this time in my graphics program - drawing a star, and flipping it to make rows, then flipping the rows to make columns,  just as I'd done by folding paper, but more accurate. It printed out like this:

There were four distinct shapes: the stars (in yellow, below); the "lozenges" in brown; the teal diamonds; and then, what I thought of as "joined pentagons" - the shapes in light lavender, which look like two pentagons joined at their bases.

This struck me as interesting! Plus I could fancy it up a bit more if I fit smaller 5-sided stars into the pentagons (in pink), and four-sided stars (in turquoise) to break up the big lozenges!

I assigned every element a color from the challenge's official choices. Then I printed out the pattern page, which without color looked like this:

I traced the shapes onto paper-backed fusible web, then pressed the pieces to the backs of solid-color fabrics. Cut out the shapes, and fused them, at an angle, on a 10" x 10" white background square.  I appliqued each shape with the neatest zig-zag I could muster (as opposed to mustard.) All the white areas are background fabric, except inside the mustard lozenge below. (Just thinking about mustard lozenges makes my throat hurt.)

I added a single lighter green star as an afterthought - 

It represents the birth of fresh, new baby avocados to take the place of aging avocados elsewhere on the quilt, and in the unrenovated mid-century kitchens of America.

Check out how a lot of talented quilters turned this color scheme from somber to fascinating, at the bottom of this page. There are some really great quilts! And I'm growing fonder of the palette! (Except mustard.)

Low-Tech Wearable (Quilt) Fitness Tracker/Wrist Entertainment System

Are you frequently stuck about what color to use next? Or do you have trouble remembering what color you used last? Then you may need to make this low-cost, low-tech, quilter's wrist color fitness tracker which, although nearly useless, will at least entertain you and people around you. 

I know it's entertaining because I wore mine to a quilt show (specifically, QuiltCon 2018), and people laughed at me. (OK, 3 people in a coffee line with me laughed. I don't actually know if they were laughing at me or with me). It's stitched to a stretch of vintage necktie, embedded with snaps:

It's constructed on a black felt background, with freehand cut silk scraps (that's why there are 7 divisions - I couldn't have achieved that if I'd measured!), and purple tulle on top. The zigzagging is metallic gold Superior thread. That's a tiny mother-of-pearl shank button in the center.

Unlike the annoyingly virtuous fitness trackers your health-conscious friends wear, this kind requires no technical skills. It's so low-tech that, now that I think of it, I probably got the idea from playing "Candy Land" in 1962, when I was a mere child of 46. (Just kidding, I was 5). If you're undecided about what color to use next, spin the spinner. Oh, right, there are two colors, the button and the background - well, you can choose between the two, or use them both! 

Alternatively, AFTER you use a color, set the spinner to that color, and then when you have to walk the dog, and you're bored pleading with it to Do Its Business,  and it occurs to you that you can't remember which fabric you cut last, just look at your wrist! Uselessly entertaining, right?

I had so much fun making that one - which is about 2" across - that I doubled the size for the next one.  This time, I used necktie scraps: 

It's Jerry Garcia o'clock! (I think the yellow fabric was one of his posthumously designed ties). At 4.25", it's too big to serve as a wrist tracker, unless you also declare it a corsage. This one can help you make a decision between polka dot, checkerboard, or floral print fabric. I constructed it on stiff double-sided interfacing, and backed it with more necktie silk. 

Third is this extremely messy necktie scrap dial, which was part of a series of collages that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. It will help you choose a  color only if you have a limited palette of  baby blue, shiny black (vintage faceted glass beads), silver-blue, white or gold. 

Wondering where I got the extremely cool clock hands? Maybe 10 years ago, I bought this package of "Game Spinners," designed by Tim Holtz for paper crafters. They come with tiny paper fasteners,  but I think buttons are more durable (and cuter). 

They're still available - google "Tim Holtz game spinners" and you will find the exact same package - cheap!  Or, make your own, if have some wire around the house and are good with it. I tried making some wire arrows, and it isn't as easy as it looks:

One was passable enough to use in this fourth tracker:

That arrow is wrapped once around the central button once. (It started out much longer). Alas, it doesn't spin as well as the professional spinners.  

How to make you own tracker? Cut a circle of felt or stiff fusible interfacing. Cut 6-8 pieces of fabric and back them with fusible interfacing (if you're using felt) . Cut pie pieces out of fabric and overlap them on the backing. Press in position. 

 Back view.

Cut everything flush with the backing. Option: Put a layer of tulle on top. Use a decorative thread to stitch over the raw edges between segments, and satin stitch the circumference. 

I made necktie bands by cutting about 9 1/2" from the narrow end of a vintage tie (Oscar de la Renta in the case below). On the right end, I trimmed back the interior lining, then rolled the edge over twice and stitched it in place. I used a snap setter to insert a pearl-headed snap top on the left side, bottom half on the right side. 

 Stitched on the "watch"

On my arm, here's the inside....

It's the ideal gift for the quilter who has almost everything!