It's December 26th but I'm declaring the start of 2022

 So I'm trying to get a headstart on 2022 creativity by summarizing 2021 and maybe 2020, maybe even 2019 when I last posted at my previous blog...

 

I guess I should start with the Torah Tie project I'm currently working on.  It's been ongoing for 8 months and I have made significant progress.  But let me tell you how it came about.

 

I am a member of the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Textiles, Toronto or POM for short.   Menachem and I were in Israel in March 2020 for our son, Rotem's wedding with his bashert, Maya, when Covid hit.  My entire family, including my now 100 year old mother, had flights booked and one by one, they cancelled. Our daughter, Carmit, who lives in Munich also had her flight cancelled.  And then the Israeli guests cancelled.  Rotem and Maya ended up getting married with only her parents, her brother and sister-in-law, my daughter, Inbal, from Toronto and her children, Amit and Doron, and Menachem and me in attendance.  Rotem and Maya exchanged vows in their backyard, under the chuppah I had made many years earlier.  It was lovely, notwithstanding the extraordinary circumstances.

Around that time, POM started having ZOOM "lunch and shmooze" meetings.  Lunch and shmooze was a once a week in person get together of POM members, some of whom couldn't get out to our monthly evening meetings.  We have been meeting twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday lunchtime to chat, show what we're working on, learn new things, and share info, not exclusively textile related.  For me, the ZOOM meetings have been a source of creativity un a wonderful community

At one of our meetings, the moderator asked if anyone would be interested in ties - she had been approached by someone whose late husband had lovely silk ties.  Several people suggested me as a possible tie taker, probably because of a previous project I had done called "Marty's Ties".  

 

Marty's Ties was a big project and a daunting undertaking.  My cousin had given me her late husband's ties "to do something with".   There were close to 100 ties.  I used a pattern from a book by Christine Copenhaven called "Necktie Quilts Revisited".  For this project, I needed 108 different ties.  Fortunately, some ties were reversible.  So in the 108 tie wedges, there are no repeats. Those ties travelled from Israel to Toronto, where I pieced most of the top, Toronto to Munich where the quilt was quilted and finished by Carmit, Munich to Israel where Carmit met up with us and delivered the quilt to my cousin, Ruthie, back to Toronto for adjustments (Rotem had measured Ruthie's bed and his measurements were off - too large, I had to cut it down), and then back to Israel.

 

Ruthie loves the quilt, but I sighed a huge sigh of relief when it was done.  So when asked if I wanted a new batch of ties, I intially said NO!  Then I relented - hey, free fabric is free fabric!

 

 

 

 

 

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