Alana's Quilt

Alana moved into a new apartment.  I had three scrappy quilt tops I made a while ago  - January 2024 to be precise.  I showed them to Alana, asked her to pick one.  She chose this:

 

 

I was going to use this as the backing:

 

It was fabric someone gave me but on closer inspection, I found lots of tiny rust marks, so I nixed that idea.  I will cut up the fabric and chuck the rust pieces.

Then I found these, also donated fabrics and put them together to form one large backing piece.

 

But I still needed white on white for the outside borders.  I had already used up most of my white on whites for the sashing and didn't have any left.  I also needed batting.  I was going to buy Hobbs 80/20 from Kawartha Quilting.  They have a fantastic price for a full bolt, but with shipping, it comes out the same as buying it elsewhere.  So I made the trip down to Fabricland at Yonge & Bloor and bought a metre of white on white (because I was too lazy to do the math for how much I actually needed) and I bought my favorite brand of batting - on sale... and blue and white variegated thread (which I didn't use because I went with the purple fabric and already had purple variegated thread).  But nothing else even though stuff was on sale.

 

So I made my sandwich and am sewing diagonal lines through the blocks.  Not so easy with a double bed quilt topper and a regular throat on my sewing machine.  I did get all the diagonals in one direction, not properly marking the quilt lines and semi eyeballing it.  It looks OK.  (if my quilt top is scrappy, my quilting is somewhat scrappy without the "s".)    But it is fine.  The big picture.

 

I will either quilt the second half this afternoon or tomorrow.  Then binding, pieced from the two purples.  And will be finished in time for my small quilting group meeting next Wednesday.  Yay!

 

 

 

 

Working on Several Projects

I was working on this post yesterday and managed somehow to lose it. Oy.

So I am working on several projects.  You may remember that I bought this fabric at B Textiles (see my previous post).

I started to make a 12" ish square wall art piece which looks something like this:

 

I am not enamoured of it.  I wanted to incorporate fabric from my wedding dress (the white flowers), ostensibly being the reason I went to B Textiles a second time.  I started quilting it using straight (for the most part) lines with different spacing between them.  It looked so much more impressive in Carolyn Murphy's work...

In the meantime, I made four little collage pieces using the same fabrics.  Two I made on a background of felted felt - not crazy about the textile, and two I made on handmade paper which I purchased during Covid.

Here they are:

.5"

 If I knew how to orient them so they have the shorter ends at top and bottom, I would.  Also the frames are smaller than I usually purchase.  But they are done.  At least one thing off my list.

I am working on cotton scraps.  A while ago I received triangular pieces, most likely cut-offs from binding strips.  I sewed them into quarter squares (is that a term) and have now cut most of them down to 2.5", 2", and 1.5" squares which I will sew onto lightweigth interfacing in 20" strips to be used in some project down the road.

Here are the before scraps:

 And here are the first of the strips:

 I am also working on a quilt for Alana.

I showed her three tops I had made, and she chose this one.

 So I bought some more white-on-white fabric for the outside borders, and some batting.  I was relying on a fabric I had to be used for the backing but when I spread it out, I realized it had little rust dots in many places and went back to the drawing board.  I found two more different pieces of lavender cotton (no photo yet), so my next step is to cut the border strips and piece the backing.

I will be presenting the the POM L&S group next month how to make stencils of Hebrew letters so I had to figure out how to do that and I have, if I can get my laptop to converse with the printer.  My laptop is on the 2nd floor, the printer in the basement so I have been getting in my steps..I am also trying to do something with a mask I wore while having radiation treatments for a meningioma (shhh - my mother doesn't know about the treatments or the meningioma.  I will post when it is further along.  

So now I can cross one more thing off my to do list (this blog post).

 

Matzah Cover

In preparations for this year's seder, my grandmother's matzah cover has gone missing.  This is (was) a round velvet cover with "לכבוד חג פסח"  embroidered on it.  The velvet was very faded, the trim coming off.  Still 100 ish years old.  It is probably not really missing.  It was last seen last year at the seder at my mother's.  It couldn't have gone far - either stashed away somewhere at her place or at one of the participants who brought stuff for the potluck seder we had.

In the meantime, I am quickly putting together a new cover, making up the design and stitches as I go along. 

I started with a gold table runner from my "maybe you can use this" stash, cut into 4 pieces so that there will be three pockets.  I cut it so that the finished rolled edges will be at the opening and I won't have to finish the inside pocket edgs.

 So since it is obvious to me and the family attending the seder that it's a matzah cover, I decided to adorn it with the Hebrew letters of   הא לחמא עניא

which roughtly translates to "this is the bread of our affliction".

I cut the letters out from my duppioni scraps and decided to place them on a piece of matzah fabric, leftover from a years ago Pomegranate Guild wine bottle apron making activity.  This is what it looks like.  

I then proceeded to quilt it, just the top and batting, and attached it with green binding (think Spring - think I didn't have a better option in my stash) to the gold background.

 

 Alas, the binding corners were not stellar. However, I remedied this by sewing 4 buttons on the corners, for the four sons and/or four questions.  That's my story and I am sticking to it.

Below is the finished cover.  Not perfect but at least we have a matzah cover for the seder.

 

Stash Building or Hoarding?

On my way to the bus stop on my way to Honey's on Friday, I saw my neighbour going to his car, holding a fabric sample book.  I don't know them well but I know that he has an upholstery shop on Avenue Road.  Inbal tells me his wife is an interior designer.

I asked him if he had any old fabric sample books, told him I was a textile artist and would be happy to take them off his hands.   Saturday morning, he showed up with some 20 books of fabric samples in all shapes and patterns.  Like this:

 

Yesterday afternoon, Menachem and I took apart one book.  A lot of work to remove from the humungous staples. 

 

 And to remove the paper backing.  I made an executive decision to cut off the paper.  So I am making piles of the naked fabric and piles of the fabric glued to the paper - I am saving this for paper collage.

 There was also a pile of fabrics not in books.

 I see many possibilities.  So am I building my stash or hoarding?  What do you think?

 

 

What I am working on

I decided to work on a fabric collage with some of the fabric I bought at B-Textile and stuff I have in my stash.

I started with the background stripes in colours I felt went with the flowers in the fabric I previously spoke about.

I wasn't as diligent as I used to be and will try to remedy that in the future.

I went to B-Textile a second time hoping I'd find my wedding dress fabric (the white textured stuff) but alas they didn't have it.  So I decided to use pieces of what I have left - it was purchased in the late 60s, and a remnant at that (I was smaller and the dress was a mini).

So my initial layout was this:

 But I didn't like the wedding dress bits.

And I didn't like the white stripes.

And I didn't like the white background in the flower pieces. 

This is where I am now:

 

I put some ribbon over the white stripes to give it some oomph.

I outlined the flower fabric with a dark green dupionni silk. 

I made two flowers from the wedding fabric, one I outlined in the darker pink-red fabric because otherwise it didn't stand out against the peach fabric.  And in the middle, I put a fabric bead, made from the dress my mother wore to my brother's wedding. 

On Friday, I went with Honey and her friend to the Etobicoke Quilters Guild show and I saw a quilt which was crayons on white fabric.  When I got home, I crayoned over the flower fabric's white background and now I am happy with that.

Now to embellish.

Fabric Collage on Hand Made Paper

 Pre-Covid, I was planning to go with Devora to a paper-making course near London, Ontario.

We never got around to actually going but during Covid, I decided to order home-made paper from "Papertrail", the company which ran the paper-making course.

And in a spurt of creativity, I don't exactly know when because I didn't blog about it at the time I made four collages using 5" X 7" paper and fabric scraps.  the purples were from Alana and Michelle's , some pieces from a dress of Elsie's and other purple bits and bobs in my stash. I still have a small container full of purples so maybe at some point I'll make more purple collages.  I actually saw a tryptich on an 8 1/2" X 11"sheet, but I digress.  I am assuming I made the collages in the summer of 2024 because I photographed them on September 14, 2024 after I had framed (Dollarama frames) and hung them on the wall.

 

 

Recently, while looking for fabrics for another project, I was reminded that I have a bin of blue small pieces and white wedding gown small pieces.  So I am going to try for another 4 collages in blue and white.  I must admit that I am trying to recreate the same or similar designs in case I am not inspired to create something totally new in design.  So sue me.

And here are the 4 pieces I made.

 

And now I am moving onto browns, golds, beiges and whatever else seems to fit.

 

 

 

B Textiles

 While Carmit was here, Honey, Devora, Carmit and I went to see an exhibit at the Koffler Art Gallery.  I was not impressed.  Carmit managed to 'splain the concepts but wallpaper, torn sheets and staples did not do it for me.  I know, I am both a snob and a boor.

The second part of our outing was a trip to B Textiles.  That's the fabric store on St. Clair West which was closed for 20 year and reopened fairly recently, under the same family ownership.  A treasure trove of 60s and 70s fabrics.  We were impressed but too overwhelmed to shop.

          A really rotten selfie, I am short but not a foot shorter than Carmit.  For historic purposes,             it  shows we were there.

I decided to return by myself this week, looking for a particular fabric.   It is a piece from my wedding dress.  Said wedding mini dress, was made from a remnant about 3/4 yard of fabric.  I have since used pieces of it in various textile art works, but am running low (55 years since the wedding and a good 40 years of sewing since).

 

 Alas, they did not have it.  Lisa (of the B family) told me that a wedding seamstress had come and bought up most of their white fabrics.

I decided to buy some fabric and got a half yard of each of the following.  They are all synthetics but exactly what is a mystery.

The first, because I liked the paisley pattern.  It is not cotton but a silk screen with the selvage "Carsilca International Screen Printing". And it has a paisley pattern.

 

The second, because it is so out of my comfort zone.  Flower power, also synthetic.I can see it paired with a peach fancy fabric someone gave me years ago and a deep pink/magenta dupionni silk in my stash.  What exactly I will do with them, I don't know.

 

And the third I bought because I intend to cut it up and use the individual silver circles with frayed edges in other pieces.

And before I forget, at the Faigie Estate "sale", I picked up a bag of what I thought was quilt batting.  Turns out it was white wool felt. Carmit said to wash a sample to see how much it shrinks.  A 12" square turned into a 9 1/2" square. So I won't be using it for bed quilts butI can use it for my wallhangings.  The texture is quite nice.  I may finally try some needlefelting on it.  This is what it looked like before washing.

This is what it looks like after washing.  Lovely bubbly texture.