This Fabric Friday’s selection is Robert Kaufman Fabrics’ Kona Cotton in the color “Wheat,” to coordinate with the matzah print fabric you probably already have in your stash. I walked into one of my local quilt shops this earlier this week, not sure if I would find a color that would coordinate well with my … Continue reading
When looking for Jewish design inspiration, illustrated Jewish manuscripts offer a treasure trove of themes and forms. And now, the British Library has made dozens of illustrated manuscripts from the Middle Ages accessible online through the Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project. Within the digitized collection you’ll find hand calligraphed Passover Haggadahs, daily prayer books, Kabbalistic texts, … Continue reading
Thank you, Stephanie, for sharing this beautiful handmade full-size tallit, personalized through a mix of creative techniques. Stephanie started with the tallit instructions in the Sew Jewish book, choosing the variations for the full-size tallit. Then she sewed on ribbons for stripes in a mix of blues, purples, and teal. She used fabric paint to … Continue reading
This Sukkot I got the chance to lead a workshop for the Beacon Sukkah Project, a Sukkot-long program of arts and lectures organized by the Beacon Hebrew Alliance and Beacon Arts in Beacon, New York. To fit this year’s theme, “Open to the Sky,” I led an introduction to drawn thread embroidery, and thought I’d … Continue reading
During the festival of Sukkot we eat in the sukkah, visit with family and friends in the sukkah, and sometimes, so I’ve heard, sleep in the sukkah, although I’ve never done that. Why not sew in the sukkah? Particularly during the intermediate days of the festival when we’re less likely to be entertaining friends for … Continue reading
You’ve probably heard of Grandma Moses, the American artist who started painting at the age of 78. But did you know that painting wasn’t Grandma Moses’ first creative vocation? Years before she took up painting she captured the landscapes and rural life around her through embroidery. Grandma Moses became famous for her folk art paintings … Continue reading
This topic requires a bit of a personal story. One of my favorite pieces of Judaica in the world is an 18th century Turkish Torah ark curtain –parochet—in the collection of the Jewish Museum London. The curtain is a red flannel wool richly embroidered in gold with Biblical and classical imagery: a city –Instanbul, perhaps, … Continue reading
So you’ve finished making the main body of your tallit —or tallis, prayer shawl— and you’re ready to add the corner pieces, the square pieces of fabric that decorate the corners of the tallit and help reinforce the holes for the tzitzit strings. Does it matter how close to the edges of the tallit you … Continue reading
Will you be joining the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework Convention later this month in Atlanta? I won’t be able to make it, but this little pomegranate will be representing me. It’s made by hand applique using silk dupioni. This one pomegranate is a small part of a banner put together by the members of … Continue reading
Orange Summer by Justine Miller Have you heard the story about the woman who wanted to be a rabbi and who was told by a man that “a woman belongs on the synagogue bimah the way an orange belongs on a Passover Seder plate”? The story has inspired many families, including mine, to put oranges … Continue reading
Happy Purim! To mark the occasion, I’m posting this piece about the Jews in one of the cities of Queen Esther’s Persian Empire: Baghdad. It’s an excerpt from an article I wrote in 2003 on an exhibit about the Jews of Iraq at London’s Jewish Museum. The exhibit was called “By the Rivers of Babylon.” … Continue reading
Inspired by a quilting class in curved piecing and staring down a sizable fabric stash, Deborah Freedman crafted this tallit featuring the rolling hills around the Old City of Jerusalem. Deborah created the scenes on each of the two ends of the tallit as separate pieces, and then she appliqued the pieces on to the … Continue reading
Sewists in New York’s Mid-Hudson River Valley region have a new local fabric shop, Beetle and Fred, in the town of Beacon. Katy Hope launched the shop last year around Thanksgiving on the town’s picturesque Main Street, overlooking the Hudson River and not far from the Dia:Beacon museum of modern art. Katy has pulled together … Continue reading
A collection of happy Hanukkah fabric patterns. Click the swatches to see details on Spoonflower. I feel like I should point out that these are not affiliate links, just fabrics to inspire your projects and brighten your day. Happy Hanukkah! Continue reading
Usually I post Fabric Friday swatches on the Facebook page, but this week I found a bunch of fabrics that I wanted to share, and that calls for a blog post. This week’s fabric theme is snowflakes. Have you ever noticed that the snowflakes on snowflake patterned fabrics often have six points? These subtle graphic … Continue reading
On the Friday before Rosh Hashanah, Sarah Jacobs, the author of the blog Sarah in NYC, was facing a deadline to finish a custom kittel –the white coat traditionally worn by men on special occasions. The deadline was later that day, but she took time to talk to me about the kittel, her work, and … Continue reading
As we roll into the holiday season, here are some book recommendatins for the Jewish sewists in your life — and for your own wish list! Full disclosure, the Amazon and IndieBound links are affiliate links, and they’re books I bought for my own shelf. There’s plenty here to inspire and keep a sewist busy … Continue reading
Mazel tov to Sara Rivka, the creative Jewish mom behind the Creative Jewish Mom blog, on her son’s bar mitzvah last week! This week she took a tiny break from her busy creative pace while I provided a guest post: an embroidered hoopla based on children’s art. That’s my daughter’s drawing on the hoopla, along … Continue reading
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