The Exploding Matzoh, and Other Tiny Quilts for Passover

Last week I showed off some springy/Easterish quilted postcards. This week: Passover. In all of these cards, the fun is in the trompe l'oeil matzoh fabric. (Sold here.)

Fiber postcards measure 4 1/2"x 6", just like a regular postcard.  These were made for a swap. I couldn't pick just one theme, so I did a variety.

First, a Passover seder plate (the plate is represented by a circle of shiny silver lame). It holds the six ritual items spelled out in Hebrew, plus unlabeled oval of quilted matzoh fabric in the middle.  Silver metallic thread holds everything down and keeps the edges together.

Clockwise from the top, we have charoset (an apple-raisin dish, represented by a bit of apple fabric), chazeret (a bitter vegetable, represented by a brownish-gold leaf), beitzah, (egg), maror (another bitter herb), karpas (greens/parsley), and zeroa (shankbone)  from a Day of the Dead fabric! 

Same idea, mostly the same fabrics, different plate: 

This card depicts an exploding matzoh (with the helpful word 'matzoh' in Hebrew).

Here we have an experimental symbolic matzoh cover magically parting (over the Red Sea?), to reveal the Hebrew word for Passover (pronounced 'Pesach', reading from right to left.)

And now, for something completely different, a card onto which I packed all ten plagues. The purple drops represent the wine we spill or drip from our cups as a sign of sorrow for the afflicted.

Reading right to left, top row first:  Blood; frogs, lice; wild animals; cattle disease, boils; hail, locusts; darkness, death of the first born.

Let us take a moment. Geez. Even on a cute little postcard, the plagues are pretty sobering. Which is, after all, the point. 

Next, plagues again, this time in stripes, with a lightning bolt on the left and a frog entering stage right. 

Finally, on Passover we read that "with a strong hand, God brought us out of Egypt." So here's the metaphorical  hand, cut from literal commercial fabric, pointing the way through a maze of matzoh madness. 

Want to make something with the names of plagues or seder plate contents? I've made up printable PDFs which you can download for free, from my pattern page. here. (or click on the link to 'My Patterns' on the upper right.) Print them onto fabric or paper, cut them out, and apply them to whatever you like!

I've also those labels on larger quilted objects, like this large matzoh cover. I call it "Spilled Wine and Plagues" matzoh cover.

Detail:

Many more ideas for quilted matzoh fabric are on my Judaiquilt website, here. 

Whatever you celebrate, wishing you a happy, healthy, and sweet springtime holiday! 

Great Book for Embellishment Beginners

Happy April! My review of Cheryl Lynch's terrific new embellishment book appeared as a guest blog post at Kay Mackenzie's All About Applique Blog on April 1.

Despite that date, it's no joke - this is a terrific book for anyone interested in getting into embellishment.

Read my review at http://www.allaboutapplique.net/2014/04/01/sew-embellished/.  The review features lots of eye candy from Cheryl's book.

The book is called "Sew Embellished! Artistic Little Quilts, Personalized with Easy Technique," published by Martingale in 2012. I recommend it highly!

Spring Mystery Quilted Fiber Arts Postcards (and Tutorial)

It's spring! (or rather, here in Southern California it's sweltering summer, while in the American Northeast my teenage correspondent informs me, the polar vortex lingers).

Whatever the atmospheric anomalies, the calendar marches on, and Passover & Easter are approaching fast!

You have just enough time make seasonal fabric postcards!

This will be our subject for the next two weeks. First, the idea below, which  has been  bouncing around in my head for a while. Can you guess what they're trying to say?

Here's #1

# 2:

#3. A clue: Think Dr. Seuss.

#4. 

#5. Another clue: Think "rhymes with ham".

#6. Here's the hardest one.

Didja guess? My brain got stuck, for some unknown reason, on the phrase "Green Eggs and Ham," the famously least-kosher, Dr. Seuss book title. I don't know why I started perseverating on it - perhaps I am suffering from post traumatic government shutdown syndrome - but there it was, my brain kept coming up with rhymes for ham, and thinking of them in fabric. So I had to make these things.

Without further ado,

THE ANSWERS:

#1 is 'Green Eggs and Lamb.'

#2 is 'Green Eggs and Clam' (OK, it's probably a scallop, but let's pretend it's a ham. Neither kosher, come to think of it.)

#3 Green Eggs and Tam (the red arrow is pointing to the hat)

#4 Green Eggs and Clams ('Clams' are old-fashioned slang for dollars. Like, Humphrey Bogart movie old-fashioned. Does anyone still call dollars clams?)

#5, The golf player, is Green Eggs and Wham. Or Bam? Or Slam!

And finally, #6, it's Green Eggs and JAM!!!!

Ha!

I came up with a whole bunch of other ideas that I haven't yet executed:

Scam (Must find Bernie Madoff fabric.)

Sam (Uncle! With patriotic fabric!)

Ram (Lamb fabric works. Draw on horns).

Yam (Like Madoff, yam yardage is elusive.)

Potsdam (a historic city in Germany which surely deserves more attention to its last syllable.)

Spam (I could print out a photo of a Spam can, but worried about trademark infringement)

Pam (ditto)

Pram (my Local Teen came up with this.Veddy British).

Fam (ily. Also my LT's. )

Shazam (ditto)

I have been careful not to consult a rhyming dictionary, so as not to exceed my pure limits.

I was thinking about turning this idea into one (totally non-holiday ) little wallhanging, but when Passover started racing toward us, and I dug out my Passover fiber art postcards to write a post about them (which I will show you next week - in preparation, you should start ordering trompe l'oeil matzoh fabric now!) , it came to me that the egg theme would make terrific greeting cards for Easter and spring in general.

How easy is it to make a Green-Eggs-and-Something-That-Rhymes-with-Ham fiber art postcard? Very easy! Here's a quick tutorial for making a bunch.

1. Cut a couple of pieces of stiff interfacing to postcard size, 4" x 6"  (It can be cardboard, Peltex 72F, Inner Fuse, Fast-2-Fuse, in other words,stiff interfacing of any kind, ideally with fusible on both sides, but okay without.)

You'll also need a couple of inches of paper-backed fusible web, less if there is fusible built into the interfacing, more if there isn't.

2. Pick a background fabric for the featured side. I picked a white fabric with subtle neon green dots (insofar as anything neon green can be subtle.) Adhere the background fabric to one side of the interfacing (use fusible web if your interfacing doesn't have built-in fusible).

3. Put fusible interfacing on the back of  a couple of square inches of a couple different shades of green fabrics. Freehand cut eggs from the green fabrics. (You might want to practice cutting eggs from scrap paper before you do it on your fusible-backed fabric.)

4. Go through your novelty fabrics (or those at your LQS*) and locate fabric with funny little things that rhyme with ham. Consult a rhyming dictionary to get beyond my list above. Cut out squares or rectangles of these fabrics and adhere fusible web to the back.

5. Adhere fusible web to the back of a scrap of fabric that contrasts strongly with the background (I picked black) and cut out little "plus" signs.

6. Arrange the items on the featured side -  the eggs, the plus signs, the nouns - and press in place with an iron.

7. Stitch everything down. I mostly used invisible/clear nylon thread and a zig-zag stitch. (On the "Tam" card I used a dark rayon green for the eggs - you might prefer that look.)

8. Trim all stray threads, especially from the back.

9. Adhere a light colored fabric to the back of the postcards with fusible.

10. Do a corded edging around the sides for a neat zig-zag finish. My corded edging tutorial is at the bottom of this post. I used a white embroidery thread around mine.

 11. On the back (the message side), write in small letters the solution to your riddle, eg "Green Eggs + Spam," or whatever. Then write your message, take it to the post office to see how much postage they want you to pay (each post office is different!), put a stamp on it and mail it to your loved ones to celebrate spring!

12. Is Spam kosher? What exactly is in Spam? I bet it involves ham. I don't want to interfere the purity of my natural brain capacity by checking the Internets. Don't send a green eggs and ham, Spam, or clam to anyone for Passover. Other than that, you're probably okay.

Your green eggs and ham rhymes are always welcomed.

* LQS = Local Quilt Shop. Support your independent shop or soon there won't be any!

Multi-Purpose Denim Wall Pocket

I love working with vintage denim - the serene, worn indigo-and-whites. Add vintage mother-of-pearl buttons, and some metal, including the jeans' original rivets, and the experience is bliss. (My best denim quilt so far is here.) 

My theory of gifts, if not life, is that things should serve multiple purpose. That's because I know that most people wouldn't wear what I wear and vice versa. But if a gift can serve multiple purposes, your giftee is more likely to enjoy it. 

So here's a wallhanging that I showed earlier, along with a bunch of other denim valentines. 

It can be hung from a wall via its loop, (which as you can see is the original buttonhole from a jeans waistband.)

The front can be unpinned and worn as a brooch: 

because it has a pin backing. 

When you remove the brooch, you find a button underneath. 

Folding the hanging loop forward, you can seal the tiny front key pocket:

Now it's a good place to hold something small, like earbuds.

There's also a secret pocket between the two layers of the backing denim. And there's another button on the back. 

Seal that back pocket by bending the pocket loop to the back: 

 The embellished heart pin is about 3" high. The entire wallhanging is almost 7" high.

I haven't given it away yet.  It hangs from a pencil holder on my desk, and I keep a small scissors in the pocket: 

Denim and Corduroy Car Quilt

This is my car quilt! For the past two decades or so, it has lived in the trunk of my two consecutive mom vehicles.

The quilt combines my husband's and my denim and corduroy jeans. The lighter patches are denim; the darker blue and black patches are corduroy. 

(For those of you newer to the planet, corduroy jeans were all the rage among students in the frozen Northeast of the 1960s and 70s; when I made this quilt in the 90's, I had several pairs to work with that neither of us had worn in years. Which was a good thing, because corduroy jeans don't slenderize the thighs even one tiny bit. The fact that we'd recently moved to hot Southern California made the prospect of ever wearing them again even more awful.)  

I took this quilt's picture yesterday, because earlier in the day I was at a quilt show in Pasadena California and saw a NEW quilt book about incorporating corduroy. New!!! The book made me wonder if my old car quilt is back in style! 

Now that I've dragged it out and taken its picture, I'm thinking it is indeed very trendy! Along with corduroy, another 2014 attribute is its asymmetry.Yes, the block placement - 9-patches alternating with 3-strip 'rail fences' - is mostly regular. But the value placement - the darks and lights - along the bottom two rows is definitely quirky, and keeps the eyes moving. In the wake of the Gees Bend quilts, and the 'Modern' quilt movement, this is very popular!  

It measures about 57" x 41". It's pretty grubby, with dirt that doesn't want to come out in the washing machine -  but it could be worse, considering that it spent most of its life under muddy snow chains, baby strollers fresh off sandy playgrounds, used dog towels, and other mobile detritus. The quilt was only occasionally extracted to lay upon grass or dirt that wasn't clean enough for unguarded family posteriors.

Technically, it isn't quite a quilt - there's no middle layer, just the pieced top, and a back from the same burgundy cotton as the border. It's tied with colorful strands of embroidery floss,

...and also machine quilted with decorative stitching along some of the seams. 

The main thing I remember from making this quilt is what a mess cut corduroy makes. Have a vacuum cleaner handy, maybe a lint roller too. Brush out your sewing machine possibly during, and certainly after you're done. If I had to make this quilt again, I 'd do it entirely in varying shades of denim. 

The other thing I remember is that the cut edges of corduroy ravelled like crazy, and that's why I did the decorative satin stitching on the most vulnerable-looking seams. The satin stitching goes through both layers  - here's the quilt back.

 Wow, that's messy. Nothing embarrasses me, obviously.

If you want to make a corduroy quilt my advice to you would be 1. Make the seam allowances a half inch instead of a quarter inch (to compensate for ravelling). I didn't do this, but you should. 2. Cover the seams with a wide zig zag topstitch once the top is pieced (it doesn't have to be a satin stitch, any zig zag will help - use invisible thread if you don't want the stitching to show), and 3. Buy a Roomba or some other superfun vacuum cleaner, plus a lint roller six-pack from Costco.

Do you have a car quilt? Should you? You might want to skip the corduroy. Unless a new book tells you otherwise. 

Wrist Candy: Denim Seam Bracelets

How fun are these? (A: Very fun, to make and wear.)

They are, of course, jeans seams, embellished with a lot of things: Embroidery thread, leather, vintage watch face, vintage buttons....

This shows all five before a final round of embellishments. Below you'll see I added a bit more to some.

1. Cross stitch with colorful thread (sorry that's hard to see), leather wrapped and glued ends, hook and loop twisted from wire.

2. Vintage brass/gold metal buttons, new chain attached at ends and in center, hook and loop from twisted wire at the ends.

3. Scrap leather wrapped ends (from a cut up old leather jacket), vintage watch face, wire hook and loop.

4. Vintage rhinestone buttons over a broken rhinestone necklace. Toggle and lobster clasp with ribbon ends. I used ribbon crimp ends on either side and they worked well for me, but you've got to get the height of the crimp ends just right.

5. Vintage silver-colored metal buttons, new chain, lobster clasp and jump ring at ends.

Other than stabbing myself multiple times with large, sharp needles (this activity is not for the thin-of-blood), making these is seriously satisfying. You should know a little about opening and closing jump rings and attaching findings (so you need a couple of jewelry pliers). Use an extra strong thread, like button and carpet thread or some other version of "heavy." If you want to form your own wire hook and loop, practice with scrap wire. After making the first several by bending wire (not particularly expertly), I vowed to make future bracelets using jump rings and clasps - I think they'll last longer, and stay on better. 

UPDATE, 5-24-14: You can make matching rings, too! Go to http://gefiltequilt.blogspot.com/2014/05/denim-rings-upcycling-tiny-bits-of-jeans.html

Above all, have fun! (And send me links to what you make!)

MY Latest ATC (Artist Trading Card) Haul

ATC's are addictive little works of art that anyone from age 2 to 102 can enjoy making. They measure 2 1/2" - 3 1/2". In our last installment, I showed you the fiber Artist Trading Cards I made from mostly vintage neckties, jeans, and an upholstery sample book. 

Now I'll show you the cards I traded them for. My ATC group is a group of incredible, kind, generous, and talented people, artistically, professionally, and personally. 

Jason Ashimoto reported that he is playing around with a woodburning tool. He used it to sketch out this exquisite, ethereal tree, and painted in the colors. 

Jenny Goto makes art using Japanese mineral pigments. This dreamlike haze features flecks of shiny gold, the little specks of which unfortunately didn't show up well in the picture. It's like a heavenly cloud.

John Tallacksen is an astonishingly gifted young artist and printmaker who devotes his professional time to helping underprivileged youth. This is one of his tributes to pioneering printmaker Charles White. It's a pencil sketch. 

See more of John's intense work on his Facebook page, or at JohnTallacksen.com.  He will participate in a group show on March 18, 2014, in the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.

John T. Watson's packs a lot of social commentary into a small space. The title of this one is "Purse Snatchers." It reminds me of driving across California freeways - mall after mall, the same eight stores in every community. Fortunately, one of them is a Jo-Ann Fabric. (I'm an anti-materialist, except when it comes to material.)

My friend Marian loves to work in collage. This is a hymn cut from an actual book, and the face is done with packing tape transfer (Simple tutorial.) I love the balance and the intensity. 

The frustrating/great thing about packing tape transfer is that it misses some spots, often for a wonderfully aged effect (and occasionally, of course, the inevitable failures, on the way to success.)

So that's my haul. I lucked out, don't you think? Every one of them is a mini-masterpiece. If you want to see what these same artists made for our last exchange, go here.  

Exchanging ATCs is a wonderful experience, especially if it's done in person. If you're interested in exchanging ATCs, in real meetings, or onoline, here are some suggestions:

• Ask at your local art, craft, and/or scrapbooking store.
• Go to http://www.atcsforall.com/. There are loads of online challenges, contests, etc. 
• For in-person swaps, check Meetup, at http://artisttradingcards.meetup.com/. Type in your zip code and see what's nearby. 
•  Go to groups.yahoo.com/ and type "Artist Trading Cards" in the search window. Some groups trade through the mail; others arrange face-to-face meetings in specific cities.
•  Check out another list of local exchanges at Artist-trading-cards.ch/events.html. 

ATCS (Artist Trading Cards) from Vintage Stuff

I mentioned in an  earlier posts that I participate in an Artist Trading Card (ATC) exchange group. ATCs are an addictive little hobby that involves creating low-pressure works of art measuring 2 1/2" x 3 1/2", and trading them with other people! (More here.) Artistic genius is a non-requirement, as I will now prove, again.

Our group had another gathering schedule for last weekend. About 3 days before, I realized I needed to get started. I decided to involve neckties, since I have a huge embarrassing goodly stash of ties and tie scraps, many vintage. So here's what I came up with:

Hippie:

The peace sign is a relatively heavy bead, made from plastic or bone? There's a red velvet ribbon and a stripe from a necktie, on a denim jeans background. The jeans piece is glued to a cardboard backing.

Necktie:

A Girl Scout star serves as a tie pin.

Arrow:

100% vintage necktie silk.

 Rectangles:

Also all neckties, plus an aged metal button in the center.

Home:

Neckties, upholstery sample fabric (the gold plaid piece), and vintage trim.

Tattered

Neckties, vintage plastic button, vintage trim including blue tatting, not done by me (probably by someone long gone), cotton and synthetic yarn.

Hubert W.: 

Neckties, red velvet ribbon, and old necktie label, plastic button that looks old. Hubert W. White is the name of the tie designer (of a different tie). Probably also long gone. Thanks, Noelle, for picking just the right button!

For some of my ATCs, I started with a thick gold/tan/white/brown upholstery fabric, with zig-zag geometric satin stitched lines. It came from an upholstery sample book. It's glued to a cardboard backing.

Blue Chip:

Includes a denim diamond cut from jeans, an old metal button, and a vintage necktie label

Zip:

 Same upholstery, with necktie, zipper, vintage metallic trims, broken conical earring and a broken necklace spacer.

Equals:

Two denim bars and a finger-pleasing thick transparent plastic button.

I also discovered that you can use the narrow end of a necktie to create an ATC-sized envelope:

The grey rectangle is ATC sized. 

This is a one-off, and it's just a fuddle:

I need to paint over it and take other drastic measures. like hiding it forever and/or claiming the kids made it in kindergarten.

The moral of this story, dear readers, is as always: You can be a non-Picasso and still have a lot of fun making very cool ATCs. And speaking of kindergartners, they love making them. It's truly an activity for all ages. All you need are pieces of cardboard cut to 2 1/2" to 3 1/2", fabric and trim scraps, glue, and OTHER card-makers to trade with. For more ideas, my woven ATCS are here. To see what my talented group members (none fiber artists, all artistic geniuses), made last time, go here.

And one thing I learned from this particular ATC creation session: Keep a lot of Fray Check and the like around. I used it on ribbon ends, and on the upholstery fabric's incredibly ravelly edges. Alternative to fray-stopping liquid: White glue mixed with a tiny bit of water. I like Crafter's Choice "The Ultimate." It's important to test the fray stopper and/or glue you choose on a sample of the fabric, to make sure it dries invisibly.