Matzah Cover a la Adva

 

3 pocket Matzah cover for Passover with Selvage Edge applique and hand embroidered blanket stitch. Completed Mar 21, 2018.  Size 10" x 11"

This piece was made for the week 6 challenge in Project Quilting season 9 - Scraptastic

The challenge requirement was to use at least 12 different fabrics in a project.  I wanted a new Matzah Cover for our family seder next weekend.  In selecting fabric I might use to create it, I noticed a fun selvage edge on one piece, and remembered that my friend Adva would want that edge when I cut it off.  Quilters don't typically use the selvage edge because it is woven more densely to hold the fabric during the printing/dying process.  Here is an image of a typical selvage edge - the bit with the colored dots.  And yes, that is Pigs Flying fabric!

Adva makes some beautiful quilts using fabric she creates by sewing together selvage edges in a very creative way, like this little bird: 

So when I thought about Adva at that moment, I decided to change direction and make this for her instead, using those selvage edges the way she does, even though I had never done it before.

Here is my collection of selvage edges before I started sewing them together.  










I created 6 triangles,  then tried out various arrangements,
and finally decided to cut 3 of them down to create this layout: 





I selected this background because it looked 'spring-like' which fits the Passover holiday,  and because it was in direct opposition to the snow storm raging outside my window: 

To get a little more definition on the shapes and secure them better,  I hand embroidered the blanket stitch around each piece:

Finally, I constructed the 3 pockets needed to make this a Passover Matzah cover.   I created this offset design, by adding a bright strip of beautifully hand dyed fabric to the edges of the pockets, so they show as stripes on one edge.  Here is a close up of the pockets with matzah inserted:


Final count:  40 different fabrics used in this piece








Adva and I met through quilting, and deepened that friendship through our shared interests in travelling to quilt shows, eating and drinking at nice restaurants,  talking about and watching shows like Amazing Race and Project Runway,  gossiping about those women on the Real Housewives shows, as if we really knew them, and sharing Jewish holidays together in a town that was mostly Christian.     

She has an amazing design aesthetic and can pick colors for a quilt that go together perfectly.  When I moved to New York City 3 years ago, I left behind a great friend.  Making this matzah cover for her and her family is my way of continuing to be with her for the holidays. 

Chag same’ach Chavera Sheri (Happy Holiday my friend)

Peace,
Paula

3/31/18 UPDATE:  Since this project started out as a matzah cover for our table, once I had finished the one for Adva, I started another for myself.  I liked the Spring color palette I used for Adva's, so I made the decorative element in my embroidered style  (it says MATZAH in Hebrew letters)  then created the same offset pockets.  We have seder tonight, so this will be used right away.

Chag Sameach to everyone celebrating Passover    

Immigrants: stitched into the fabric of America

Boro repair stitching on torn jeans.  Jeans pockets on back.   Completed Mar 11, 2018.  Size 9" x 6"

This quilt was made for the week 5 challenge in Project Quilting season 9 - A Stitch in Time Saves Nine.   

The anti-immigrant drumbeat in the United States is frightening, and so ill informed.  Our country is a nation of immigrants, and each wave brings a richness to the texture of the American culture.



There is a technique of clothing repair from Japan called Boro Stitching recently explored in my local quilt guild.  In it, patches of fabric are sewn behind and on top of areas to be mended, and the patches are secured with a long stitch, which may be decorative like Sashiko, or simply straight lines.

I purchased a pair of tiny jeans from a local Goodwill shop, with a hole in the knee, and then repaired the hole with fabric from various countries. 



The red behind the hole is from Iran (given to me by a coworker who travelled home for a visit a few years ago.  The other fabric patches represent central America, African nations and Indonesia. 
My concept was to show that this quintessential American fabric (blue jeans) are made whole by the inclusion of various immigrant communities, stitched together using a technique that is at once foreign, and recognizable. 


















For the back, I was charmed by the tiny back pocket and side pocket of these small jeans, so I kept that as whole as possible and used them as is. The pockets still function.

This piece is rather wonky, due to the thickness of the denim fabric, and those very cumbersome seams.  I think this represents the shaky ground we are on at this time.  As a Jew, I know the danger of xenophobia (fear of people from other countries).  Jews in the diaspora have often been blamed and then persecuted for trouble in foreign lands, and we are admonished to watch for the downward slide that begins by blaming 'others' (not your group) and not standing up in protest. 

The very real economic hardships suffered by so many citizens in our central and southern states, are being blamed on immigrants taking the jobs. This is simply not true; the traditional jobs and industries have vanished due to automation and globalization.


Immigrants from all countries have the same goal: safety and prosperity for their families.


I am an immigrant.


Peace,

Paula 

Not Enough

100's of hand embroidered French knots, machine quilted.    Completed Feb 25, 2018.  Size 14" x 8". 

This quilt was made for the week 4 challenge in Project Quilting season 9 - Yellow.  

After yet another school shooting, in Parkland, Florida on Feb 14th, I knew I had to address the problem - its this gun - the AR 15.  Thoughts and Prayers are not enough.  Better mental health services are not enough. Reporting troubled people is not enough.  Active shooter drills are not enough.  Armed guards in schools are not enough.  BAN THIS GUN - and others like it. 

The challenge theme is "yellow", so I selected a solid yellow fabric, and various yellow embroidery threads. I had seen this sort of embroidery, a dense working of French knots that leave a word or image in the negative space, like the image below.  I do lots of embroidered work and wanted to try something new.  

I traced an image of the AR 15, and then transferred it to fabric, on my window 'light box'  - then I basted the outline as a way to create a mark that would not brush off while I worked the knots.  This is the first time I did that step, and I'm really glad I tried it.  I'll do that again! 




   

















I started the French knots, trying to balance the various colors as I went around the outline of this beast.  At the end, I added some color a little more in the gold range, to give definition.  And then finally added the 17 red knots, commemorating the 17 dead at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  I learned after I started working on this piece that one of our cousins was at the high school that day.  I'm so glad Dani is ok  (link to her Good Day LA interview)   The quilting (pop pop pop pop) is based on something she said, "we heard popping sounds", which I've heard in other interviews.  This gun doesn't 'bang',  it pops. 

Here are images of this piece in progress.  The color change of the background is completely due to lighting used when photographing.  That's a whole other interesting exploration.

 

 

The AR 15 is the beast responsible for many of the mass shootings in the past few years.  The damage caused by this weapon is horrifying, as attested to by survivors and first responders (police, ER doctors).  Even veterans who used this gun in battle explain why we don't need it on our city streets.   I'm not a gun enthusiast so I don't know the exact words to use:  is this an assault weapon, a machine gun, an automatic weapon.  I have no idea.  But if you are going to start arguing semantics about this gun, then you are part of the problem. 

EDIT:  My friend Jesse Rabinowitz stated it this way:   

 "Your ability to avoid dealing with the murder of innocents with a haughty, faux-expert lecture on the nuances of high-volume murder weapons betrays either an emotionally-ignorant, completely-numb, tone-deaf response to our frequent mass-shootings, or a calculated willful ignorance of the mass-murders of innocence, in a hopelessly morally-withered clinging to an adolescent notion of liberty without responsibility. If you think that liberals give a flying fuck about the fine distinctions between ARs, assault rifles, automatics, semiautomatics, or fucking rocket launchers, or that we are too dumb to know the differences, you are deeply mistaken. If we stumble in murder-weapon syntax, it's not because we couldn't study gun magazines, it's because we know high-volume killing machines when we see them and don't bother getting wound up in anal distinctions about weaponry while missing the carnage that people like you gloss over."

I'm NOT advocating for complete gun control.  I understand why some people like to shoot guns.  I'm just not one of them. 

Its only February.  These 17 deaths make it 53 THIS YEAR.  If you add in the physical injuries that's 137.  In February.  And that doesn't count the PTSD - all those people who are traumatized by the popping sound a gun makes,  by the rattle of a classroom door handle,  by a kid in their school who threatens violence.  And it doesn't count all the family members who are traumatized by the loss of their children, parents, siblings, cousins, friends. 

Enough is enough.  We must do something to protect our citizens in schools, at concerts, in night clubs, on the street.  There is simply no reason for military style weaponry to be available to civilians.  I hope the kids pushing for change  are successful, and shame on us adults for not taking care of this for them.  The agenda of the NRA has morphed from 'educating people about gun safety' to selling as many guns as possible.  This is why their answer to this shooting is to  arm more people.  NO!  NO MORE GUNS. Enough already. 

Now more than ever, peace,

Paula

PS:  thanks Flaun Cline for the stats on deaths and injuries so far this year.  Tragic stuff.