Making Many Meaningful Moons

Did you see the blood moon last night? We couldn't see it from our house, but I caught up with this fabulous blog post with images from around the world. They cry out to be turned into quilts! (Write to the photographers for permission first, of course!)

It reminded of a wallhanging I made last year, which unwittingly prophesized the event:

I called this scrap project "Night Meeting," because of the two creatures at the bottom.

 Now I'm thinking of renaming it, Blood Moon! The orange moon was cut from a deliciously streaky orange-and-red batik fabric.

I used the same idea years before, for this matzoh cover. The four corner moons were cut from streaky batiks - purple, magenta, lavender, and orange - plus the central one, of course, from trompe l'oeil matzoh fabric (no financial affiliation).

 Detail:

Stamping is another way to make moody moons. These were stamped with fun foam, the thin foam that kids play with, cut into circles. By not refreshing the fabric paint with each consecutive stamping, you get an interesting gradation among the images. 

Thread painting is another way to go. Stitch heavily with metallic and holographic threads over an appliqued circle. (Pretend this is an orange moon instead of a blue/green batik sun. Close enough).

I am a huge fan of superstar quilter Carol Taylor, who has made both moon and eclipse-themed quilts, shown off on this page. Check out especially the quilt titled "Moonshadows" and "Eclipse #2."

Have you made meaningful moons?

Awkward Freemotion Quilting, Star Wars & Hair Edition

On my planet, there are two types of freemotion quilting (FMQ).

1. Respectable. (Taught brilliantly by Leah Day, Lori Kennedy, and possibly your local quilt shop teacher), and

2. Awkward. (A form of self-entertainment). 

The trick with both is to "draw" (stitch) a continuous line with the sewing machine, avoiding thread-cutting and ends-hiding. It often involves stitching accurately and repeatedly over the same lines. All this strengthens the quilt, and lets you finish faster, 

Respectable FMQ takes a great deal of practice. Drawing ability helps. It's tasteful, often stupendous, and might win a ribbon at the quilt show.

Awkward freemotion quilting requires no knack for drawing and no practice. A sewing machine is optional. It's a fun way to doodle with a pencil on paper, improves hand-eye coordination and deepens understanding of how to connect FMQ motifs. Done well, you should make yourself laugh.

My latest awkward episode was inspired by the prospect of a new Star Wars movie, coming out in December.  I discovered by accident that if you make 8 loops, you've got Princess Leia's head: 

Jagged lines make a Wookie: 

R2D2 isn't hard to draw continuously...

...but it's even easier to just spell him out in cursive.

Darth Vader is waaayyy  more challenging. As you can see, his helmet was dehydrating and shrinking by the end. 

Talk about helmet hair!

Here's a light saber design:

And speaking of hair, I happened to go to the hairdresser last weekend, and made the mistake of asking for curls with my longish trim. For the rest of the day, I looked like a mature person with a 5-year-old Shirley Temple coif. 

Or maybe like George Washington:

(Drawing George is like drawing Leia, but the loops pile up vertically.)

And speaking of Presidential hair, on the Democratic side, candidate Bernie' Sanders' hair is a Thing. ("Bernie Hair! Don't Care!" tee shirts here. No financial affiliation) My interpretation: 

Glasses are an important vehicle for travelling from one side of a design to the other. 

Hillary's hair changes too much to draw. (Here are 10 different 'dos just from 1993-1994!)

 Joe Biden, and most of the Republican candidates, mostly have unobtrusive hair. I was left with Rand Paul...

(His curls remind me of my son as a toddler. Awww!)

...And You-Know-Who. I drew this page while gazing at his hair in a variety of Google images.

Call this design (a) Donald Trump, (b) Softserve Ice Cream Training Session 1, or (c) Santa Claus, elves, and Bart Simpson flying in the sky. UPDATE: A reader saw Elvis in these figures. That's cool with me. 

And speaking of male do's, have you noticed lately the plethora of young men with man-buns and beards? 

I've barely scratched the surface of  coiffure-related freemotion quilting possibilities!  Run with it! Send pictures! (But no head lice designs - I must draw the line somewhere.) 

Earlier adventures in awkward freemotion quilting: 

Post Spock

Hyperspace

Sound of Music

Sky Things

Gefilte Fish (Now a hot presidential campaign issue!)

PS Speaking of Star Wars, who says Darth Vader can't dance? Your 7-to-77 year old Star Wars fan will love this. 

PPS Speaking of trivial Presidential issues, my friends just told me that you can #Trumpyourcat! No animals were harmed in the making of this strange new hobby.  

PPSS: This just in: President Coolidge was a quilter!

Fiber Art Postcards Inspired by Tradition

Wishing you a healthy, happy, creative New Year! Jewish New Year, that is! Also known as Rosh Hashanah, it starts tonight.

This is the one time of the year that we dip apples in honey (Try it! You'll like it!). The challah bread is round for this occasion (like the year). We convey wishes to family and friends for a good year.

And one way we do this is with cards. A longstanding tradition, first in Europe, and then transplanted here, is to send pictorial Rosh Hashanah postcards to our loved ones. Here's one from Germany, dated 1908.

Here's one I found in my husband's family photo album, with a photograph  of unknown ancestors glued in the center: 

Here's an insanely great dozen more vintage cards. Warning: They're addictive and you can find plenty for sale on ebay. 

Several years back, I did a fabric postcard exchange with a Rosh Hashanah theme. Inspired by vintage postcards, I used rubber stamps for the lettering and lots of items cut from novelty fabric

First, Mr. Spock of blessed memory. I purchased the rubber stamp at a Star Trek convention in the 1990s. Sadly, this is my first Rosh Hashanah without Leonard Nimoy on Planet Earth.

I hope he's on an even better planet. He's about to blow the shofar (to the right of his head), the ram's horn whose intrusive blast shakes our deepest selves. The lettering reads "shanah tovah", a good new  year. On the left is a good luck hamsa hand; a metal hamsa charm is on the upper right. Spock's Vulcan salute is, of course, derived from Jewish tradition.

Like Leonard, Elvis Presley was technically Jewish. Really! Read this! And, like Leonard, Elvis was also a strong supporter of Jewish causes.

U.S. Presidents and Lady Liberty look worried about the future...Perhaps they were anticipating the 2016 Presidential election?

Two anonymous women convey best wishes for a year with more sewing and less cleaning:

The back: 

(I mailed it in an envelope so I didn't need room for an address). 

Fish is a traditional dish for Rosh Hashanah - this one was cut from an African fabric. (This tradition actually involves fish heads - or, if you don't have fish around, a nice juicy ram's head - oy vey!  Read all about Rosh Hashana food traditions here.)

Pure wackiness:

Also random, because mahjong is by now a Jewish (as well as Chinese) sport: 

Making and trading fabric postcards, for any occasion, is a blast! And very simple. And therapeutic. Here's a tutorial:

1. Cut a couple of pieces of stiff interfacing to postcard size, 4" x 6"  (Peltex, 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. 

2. Pick a background fabric for the featured side. Cut it to a little over 4" x 6".  Adhere it to one side of the stiff interfacing. Use fusible web if your interfacing doesn't have built-in fusible. Trim excess. Don't put fabric on the back yet.

3. Gather all the fabrics with images you want to include in the top. Cut them out from the fabric, with a half inch margin all the way around. Apply fusible web to the back of them, then cut out closely, and arrange them on the background fabric. 

4. Press, then stitch everything down. I often use invisible/clear nylon thread and a zig-zag stitch. 

5. Trim stray threads, especially from the back. Once everything is stitched to the front, turn to the back (the message side.)

6. Adhere a rectangle slightly larger than 4" x 6" to the back. It should be light-colored so writing will show.  Fuse it in place, and trim close around the edges. 

7. Zig zag all the way around the edges. For extra neatness, do a corded edging - my corded edging tutorial is at the bottom of this post.

 8. On the back (the message side), draw a vertical line 2/3rds of the way across toward the right. Write the address on one side, and your message on the other side of the line.  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. (Note: If it has 3D elements, like buttons or beads, you may have to send it in a padded envelope.) 

Embellishment Fun with Paper Clips

Buying school supplies? If you're the embellishment type, the paper clip department may have stopped you dead in your tracks.

A couple of years back, my nearest office store had a freestanding station devoted to a wide variety of paper clips. It was like a salad bar, but with no nutrients. I went nuts and picked and chose a bunch, including these.

I think that's a diamond ring on the left, and a sort of G-clef third from the right. There were more, as you'll see soon below. Some were covered with colored rubber; some were beautiful and colorful bare wire, like the lavender second from the left and the neon green, far right. The bar even supplied containers with partitions, so you could sort your clips like a TV dinner:

(Then I spilled them and didn't take the time to re-sort).

But that was a couple of years back. This past week, when I went school supply shopping with my DD, I was saddened that the paper clip salad bar was still gone. Instead, there were only packaged clips.

Nice colors, but nothing to match the creativity of those older clips. At the time, they inspired me to make a couple of things. First, the strip below. It measures about 9" x 3" and weighs a ton.   There's black-and-white paper clip fabric, and a velvet black-and-silver ribbon running horizontally across the middle. Stiff interfacing is inside. The rubber-covered white paper clips are clipped along the top; black ones along the bottom, and large colorful metallic ones clipped around the velvet ribbon in-between

 (That particular fabric is out of print, but I found a bunch of people selling it on etsy. There are also newer paper-clip novelty fabrics - Google "paper clip quilting fabric.")

When I close the ends with a black-and-white decorative binder clip, it becomes a  paper weight/clip dispenser/awfully heavy cuff bracelet.

Then, early this summer, I made an art piece devoted to 20th century office paraphernalia, inspired by my favorite typewriter fabric. Preclip:

Post-clip:

Can you find the ring, shoe, purse, heart, stars, purse, guitar, clef? 

More paper clip lore: There's a sewing connection! Before clips, people used PINS - sewing pins - to hold paper together! Early clip makers boasted that their products were less likely to draw blood. The first patent for paperclips was issued in 1867, but clips didn't become popular until the 1890s. I learned all this and more at the Early Office Museum website, here. Be sure to scroll down to the "Early Paper Clip Gallery." Paper clips came in a huge variety of shapes and sizes!

Much more recently, a hip British font design company created a font from colorful bent paperclips:

You can buy the font, but not the actual paperclips, unfortunately, here.   http://handmadefont.com/shop/paperclip-font/

Also from England, there's a company selling golden paper clip-inspired jewelry, here.  http://www.brit.co/hillier-london/

A Pinterest page with more paperclip jewelry is here.

Aliexpress sells a wild variety of paperclips: Penguins, fish, cats, dog bones, butterflies, and my fave, which they call humanoids: 

Unclipped, they are anatomically correct gentlemen. But clipped they're G-rated. Unfortunately, you have to buy 200 at a time, which you can do here.

Ten cute things made from paperclips here.

How about a paper clip inspired freemotion quilting design from the great Lori Kennedy? Find the tutorial on this page.

On a far more somber note, speaking of paper clips resembling humans, there's the Six Million Paper Clip Holocaust memorial project, here.

What office supplies have you used in your quilts? 

(P.S. No financial affiliation with any of the vendors in this article.)

Give Me Books and Quilts: Mary Marks' New Mystery

Love books? Here's a quiltlet that I made a couple of years ago. It's 7" long and illustrates a famous John Keats quotation: "Give me books, fruit, French wine, fine weather, and a little music out of doors played by somebody I do not know." 

It's a wall hanging, a coaster, a bookmark, or even a cuff bracelet. I call these concoctions quiltlets. (Find more in the word cloud on the lower right.)

And speaking of books and the people one knows - I don't read a lot of quilting fiction, but I make an exception for my friend Mary Marks' quilty mystery series. First, they are fast-paced page turners, Second, they are hilarious. And third, her heroine is a quilty, clever, reckless, zaftig, 55-year-old heroine, Martha Rose.

There is one drawback; this third book, Gone But Not Forgotten, features luscious descriptions of a broad range of Los Angeles cuisine, from In-and-Out's secret menu to a Salvadoran restaurant; plus chocolate babka, pastrami, Italian roast coffee, and raisin challah, applesauce cake - you get the idea. I was torn between not wanting to stop reading, and needing to leap up and drive to the nearest bakery or ethnic restaurant.

You also gotta love that her heroine, Martha, is a hot mama who is the object of various character's romantic desires. She's a not-always-nice Jewish girl, living the dream, with plot twists aplenty, and quilting tips at the end.

If you haven't read one of Mary's books yet, I suggest starting with the first, Forget Me Knot, and second, Knot in My Backyard, since the characters develop in interesting ways. Read them outdoors with a glass of fine wine - you will enjoy them, I guarantee!

(No financial affiliation with Amazon or Mary. I did receive a review copy of her book from the publisher.)

Double Jeopardy: Quilt the Seven Species

A couple of weeks ago, I wept buckets at the marriage of two young people who dedicate their lives to helping Los Angeles' neediest. One uses his artistic genius to help at-risk youth; the other brings affordable farmer's markets to low-income communities.

I gave them a quilt that I made a while ago, mostly from Fabri-Quilt's Farmer John fabric prints. (pattern.) This quilt had been waiting for a forever home - as soon as I learned about the bride's job supporting urban farmer's markets, I knew this quilt was for her. I blogged about it here.

Plus, since they are religious, I made them a small botanical wallhanging/potholder. Pop quiz:  Can you name the seven species of the Bible? (Dum Da Dum Da Dum Da DUM. Dum Da Dum Da DEEP dum dum de dum de= Jeopardy music). Not sure? Here's a hint:

Top row: figs, olives, pomegranates. Middle row: grapes, wheat, dates. Bottom: barley!?

Admittedly, the "barley" looks more like my Southern California lawn (pre-drought), but I'm declaring it green barley (a potentially bogus nutritional supplement). Commercial barley-themed fabric does not abound at my local quilt shop or online.

The fig and the date fabric are realistic prints.The olives and barley are batiks. Usually I don't mix batiks and prints, but the Bible made me do it? I was in a big hurry. In the borders, the Hebrew letters' font is similar to Torah calligraphy.

To see some truly spectacular seven species fiber art, made by people who were not in a big hurry, check out:

• Deborah Schwartzman's (here and here)
• Adina Gatt of Efod Art Embroidery (here). 
• Deborah Kembell's quilt here. 
• Marilyn Levy's seven species inspired work here. 
• Elana Schachter's incredible ark curtain and table cover, here. 

If you have an embroidery machine and want to make a relatively fast Seven Species project, an elegant way to go is this set from Stitches by Sue Warshell, here (no financial affiliation). A different machine embroidery set is here.

Say 'Yes' to the Wedding Quilt, Part I: Everything you need to know about making a wedding quilt is on reality t.v.

I have a secret guilty pleasure—tell no one! It’s that t.v. show called ‘Say Yes to the Dress,’ about brides and their families and friends, shopping for pricey wedding dresses. 

Shows need plots, and in this one, it’s usually a power struggle. Whether concocted by producers, or genuine, I don’t know (people say ‘reality t.v.’ is an oxymoron), but on nearly every episode, a sister, mother, best friend, or groom tries to force the bride to buy something that he or she loves, but the bride does not.  

And when the bride does find a dress she loves, and  emerges from the dressing room to show it off on the store's runway, the offender(s) giggle and carp:  “You look like a linebacker!” “You look like a bedspread!” or, the classic, “You look like a hooker!” The bride scurries back to the changing room in tears (except for that one bride who wanted to look like a hooker).  

In the dressing room, one of the sales associates – all skilled psychotherapists   –   gives the bride a powerful pep talk, explaining that if she’s old enough to get married, she’s certainly old enough to choose a dress. Meanwhile, the manager is scolding the rude entourage. An invisible, troubled-sounding male narrator ominously intones, “Will Rachel’s mom [sister/cousin /best friend] stand in the way of her dreams?” 

After a commercial break or three, everyone behaves better, and the bride nearly always winds up with a gown she loves. In the closing moments, the now-jubilant narrator declares: “If a bride stays true to her style, she’ll glow as she walks down the aisle,”  or, “If everyone keeps an open mind, she’ll walk down the aisle looking divine.” Or something like that, which almost rhymes.

Formula, yes, but in today’s troubled times, I find it soothing. As an unrepentant quilt embellisher, I enjoy looking at lace, tulle, silk, satin, tiaras, pearls, bows and bling. Pretty dresses, pretty brides, pretty crazy entourages and pretty steep prices (from $1,000 to $30,000 or more) – except for the tab, the stakes are pretty low. So it’s relaxing to listen to The Show while I quilt, or take coffee and chocolate breaks to watch.

Over the past several months, my whole life began to morph an episode of The Show.  That’s because height of my addiction coincided with working on a commissioned quilt that would also serve as a wedding canopy, called a “chuppah,” at a Jewish wedding.

This bride first wrote to me in December telling me she wanted to collaborate in making an heirloom quilt that would serve as a canopy for her summer wedding, and then would stay in the family as a quilt for generations.

I‘ve made chuppot (the plural in Hebrew') before, but never while hooked on bridal t.v.  The next thing I knew, the edges of my daily reality got all fuzzy, like on The Twilight Zone, and I transmogrified into the supportive Sales Associate, while my bride became, well, The Bride. She had the hopes and dreams, and it was my job to help her realize them.

Here are some of the lessons I learned that are as true of helping a bride choose a wedding dress on reality television as they are of making a bride a wedding quilt in regular old reality.

1. Start with the visuals. Sales associates like it when brides bring in photographs of favorite gowns. They don’t have to guess from a zillion possibilities. Similarly, my collaboration with this bride started with images. She told me which quilts on my website she liked best. She also told me she wanted a scene of Jerusalem in the middle, surrounded by a Hebrew quotation. I started sketching variations and emailing them to her as pdfs. (I sketch them on my computer - I find Coreldraw easy and intuitive). I had some Jerusalem fabric in shades of gold, and I scanned it to use it in the drafts as the Jerusalem landscape.

 Ideas flew back and forth. (By the way, the Hebrew in this image and the one below is nonsense/placeholder Hebrew. Don't worry, we straightened it out!)

We soon learned that what really needed figuring out was the border, which brought me to the next lesson…

2.  More is more.  In t.v.-land, some brides want it all – rhinestones, pearls, lace, feathers, beads, ruching, fabric flowers, a train, the whole 9 yards (literally).  The sales associate has to break the news that more costs more.  My bride especially admired one of the most complex quilts on my Judaiquilt website, called ‘Invocation’.

 Oh sure, what’s not to like? That particular piece is the quilty equivalent of a gown by P’nina Tornai  (designer of famously sexy, overwrought, expensive wedding dresses. Yes, that's a see-through bodice).

 Invocation isn’t sexy, doesn’t have any bodice, nor tens of thousands of sparkly jewels and feathers, but it is a bit overwrought, with a 500+ piece border, made from dozens of different batik fabrics in shifting values, which took me, oh, about a decade (on and off) to arrange. 

So, just like a sales associate  suggesting only gowns within the bride’s budget, I tried very hard to focus my bride with sketches of MUCH less complex borders (like, 14 pieces instead of 500).

No go. She kept choosing the more intricate options. I reluctantly told her that, if she really wanted that 500-piece border, I would have to raise the initial price. I held my breath, as they always do on The Show, wondering if the bride’s family could or would pay the extra to get what they really wanted. They did.  Phew! 

4. Sometimes the bride has to touch the textiles. From The Show, I learned that there are poufy “ball gown”-style wedding dresses, which differ from slender “mermaid gowns,” complete with tail fins – who knew? A bride who walks into the salon wanting to look like Cinderella might, to her shock, walk (or swim) out looking like The Little Mermaid. Or vice versa. Only by trying a dress on can a bride learn what she likes.

Similarly, figuring out colors and textures for our quilt.  In our early emails, my bride told me she imagined ‘royal’ colors, like golds, silvers, coppers, and whites. I couldn’t quite figure how that would work in cotton batiks, which I had initially planned on using (Batiks are what give Invocation a painterly quality). If a quilter’s cotton isn’t overprinted with metallic ink, the golds, silvers and copper become yellows, greys and brown. So I offered alternatives. What about adding more color, in jewel tones, like blues, purples, greens?  Then I had another idea: What if I made the quilt in silk dupionis? Then they would have the metallic sheen! I sent her lots of snapshots of different fabrics.

What a mess, right? It took me a while to realize that all these photographs were confusing us further.  A photo can only go so far in capturing the real look, feel and hue. So, in desperation, I stuffed about 30 fabric swatches into an envelope, and mailed them to her, in the good old U.S. Reality Mail. I asked her to sort them into three piles: Love, Indifferent, and Hate. 

She and her fiancé did the sorting together. When they mailed those swatches back to me, in three  marked bundles, I could never, ever have predicted the results:  

 I stapled the results to three seperate pieces of paper. LOVE swatches are on the left; INDIFFERENT in the Middle; and  HATE on the right.

They loved many of the blues, browns and tans.  Hated all purples and greens! They didn’t like grays (= cotton silvers). They were indifferent to the pinks. But there were lots of exceptions, which took me completely by surprise. They disliked several of the blues that were the exact same hue as the blues they loved, but which had a different subtle print or batiked design. Same with the browns. Same hue, but different patterns, raised strong feelings in them, much, much more than I would have predicted

I hung the three sheets on my wall, and referred to them frequently, making the quilt as much as possible from LOVE set, throwing in INDIFFERENTs when necessary, and no HATES, of course. This very specific information was pure gold in terms of steering my fabric choices.

Part II: Say Yes to the Wedding Quilt, Blood Font and Tears.