Blue and White Fabric Colllages on Handmade Paper

I had made these fabric collages in February or March.

 Yesterday, I framed them.

 Quite pleased with myself.

Is it Over Yet?

 The following is NOT to be shared with my mother.

A year or two ago, my shaking hands started to concern me.  I went to my GP who said maybe Parkinsons but I'll send you to a neurologist.

The neurologist said definitely not Parkinsons, probably essential tremors but I'll send you for an MRI just to be sure, not expecting to find anything.

The "anything" turned out to be a meningioma, a benign tumor in the tissue between the skull and the brain.  My meningioma was about 2.5 cm and 3 cm is the size where it may start pressing on the brain.  Treatment advised: radiation.

A subsequent MRI showed no change in the size but after much thought, I decided to go for the radiation because I wasn't sure I wanted to wait until surgery was necessary and I figured 74 is a better age to do it than older.

They recommended 5 radiation treatments, every other day, and the duration is approximately 25 minutes.

The treatments themselves were fine.  They make a mask which fits over your face and is attached to the treatment table.  A little claustrophobic considering you can't move your head and have no concept of how long you've been lying there.

While I was lying there, I tried to distract myself by thinking about quilting/needlework projects.  And I kept time by counting songs of the 50s and 60s playing in the background.

I don't know the result of the treatments - I will have a followup MRI and doctor's appointment in July.

Before the treatment, I asked what they do with the mask when the treatments are over.  Trash unless I wanted to keep it.

And so was born "Is it over yet?" - a mask made from the treatment mask.

I failed to take a photo of the "naked" mask but this is what it looked like, sort or, lying down as on the treatment table.

 And this is the finished mask:

 The top part is 2" squares of different needlework techniques - applique, quilting, mosaic quilting, needlepoint, thread bits joined by Solvy, using leftover bits and pieces from previous projects.

The curly grey hair is from an unravelled sweater from Faigie's estate.

The nose/mouth opening on the mask was not pretty so I covered it with a mask I made from Faigie's felt, covered with eight flowers to represent the approximately 8 songs which played during each 25ish minute treatment.  And I couldn't resist a few beads and seed embroidery stitching.

I am still debating whether to put 5 (for the number of treatments) and 25 (for the length of each treatment) on the sunglass lenses.

I will probably gift it to the radiation doctor when I have my followup.

Stenciling sort of

I recently showed at a POM L&S meeting the matzah cover I made.  Members asked questions about how I did the Hebrew lettering.  I will be demonstrating the technique on an upcoming L&S meeting so I better get my ducks in a row so I can show how I did it.  It may not be the best way of doing it, but it is the way that works for me.

In a recent L&S meeting about the Little Synagogue on the Prairie, there was a "mizrach" on the wall.  It was common in Jewish homes to have a sign or plaque on the wall called a mizrach which means east, the direction towards which prayers are said.

I went to Google and typed in "mizrach".   It sent me to Wikipedia.  All I really wanted was the Hebrew word מזרח

 

  

I highlighted מזרח and copied it into a new document in my word processing program.

 

  

I adjusted the font to "Aharoni" (you can chose whatever Hebrew font your word processor has but I chose Aharoni because the letters are thick).

I adjusted the letter size to 240 pt - this gave me all four letters on one row.  You could make them bigger, or smaller, depending on what you are making.

And I got this which I printed onto coloured paper - I will explain why further on.

  

OK.  So now we have the base for the template.  If you are planning to make a stencil, tape the paper to a window, tape a piece of freezer paper, non-shiny side facing you, onto the base and trace the letter outline with a pen or pencil onto the freezer paper.

 

Remove from window.  Cut out the inside of the letters.  Et voila, a stencil you can iron onto fabric to paint with fabric paint.

 

 

 

If you are planning to cut out fabric letters, cut out the letters, cutting around the black ink.

Now flip the letters over so all you see is the pink.

Trace the letters onto fusible - I used Steam a Seam Lite.  I am assuming you know how fusible works, if not ask someone who does know.

   

There are two steps to the fusing. 

 

You will need to peel off the paper on the unwritten side of the fusible and fuse it to the fabric from which the letters will be cut.  Fuse either

a) onto the wrong side of the fabric; or

b) onto something like batik which doesn't have a right or wrong side, or onto a silk where neither side is discernably right or wrong.

 

 I used batik because I wanted to use up my bits and pieces.

 

Cut the fusible to separate between the letters.  This is where you peel off the paper not written on Then iron the fusible onto the fabric. COVER WITH PARCHMENT PAPER BEFORE IRONING.  Sorry for shouting.

It is much easier to cut out if you don't cut the letters until they have been fused.

 

Once you have fused onto the fabric and cut out the letters, you will have this:

 

 

Now peel the fusible on the back of the letters, place the letters on the fabric where you want them and you will have the final lettering.  I fused onto a goldish synthetic fabric which I will eventually finish off with quilting, embroidery or something else.

 

 Alternative sources for lettering:

 Masterfont - used to have a place where you could try out the font.  I used to try out the words I wanted, then copy and paste into a word document.  Don't know if this will still work.

alefalefalef.co.il - a graphic designs site but they have free Hebrew fonts.

 

Alana's Quilt - Finished

I finished the quilting.  Remind me not to do large quilts on a domestic machine.  I have cut off the excess backing and batting.  Quilt not entirely squared but close enough.  I cut out 2.5" strips from the fabric cutoffs for binding.  Maybe tomorrow.

 I haven't figured out yet how to upload the photos Menachem sent me.  I made the backing from the fabrics above.

I am very proud of myself - I pieced the cutoff batting and have put it away so that when I need batting for something, I don't have to worry about different types of batting not being compatible. Yay me.

 

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.