Armchair Tour of Israel

This summer, The Quilt Show has been doing weekly armchair trips to wonderful locales.  They have made 2 slide shows of my trip to Israel!! Last week was an overview:

http://www.thequiltshow.com/os/blog.php/blog_id/4971

This week, I am most excited because it is all about the mosaics I found in this out of the way synagogue In Acco, called Or Torah. 

http://www.thequiltshow.com/os/blog.php/blog_id/4988

A sneak peak

My Husband and I took off on our own.  From Tel Aviv, we took 2 taxis and 3 trains to get there.  We ended up with an eager taxi driver who did not speak much English but was insistent he knew where it was.  He did not and kept telling us that we were there, when we were not.  We finally found the temple on a tiny little side street.  It was so worth the trip.

My fabric mosaic interpretation

My Idea Of A Scrap Quilt

Sometimes I sit in my studio and look at all the fabric that I own.  All of the money that I have spent over the years, has certainly been my form of therapy.  If you had to guess how many yards of fabric 

you owned could you do it?  Would you want to do it? I couldn't guess and the thought of it makes me very uncomfortable. 

 As a former scientist, I can figure out a way to approximate  the yardage in my stash.  I can estimate  how much I have by weighing it.  Do I want to do this?  Heck No!!!  It's depressing enough looking at my bulging shelves.  Much of the fabric is outdated and would not be the focus of a quilt that I would design now.  I shy away from fabric stores and quilt shows, so I am not tempted to buy more, at least until I've used up some of what I already have.  If I need to create a project for a book or magazine, then I would be happily forced to buy current fabric, but otherwise, I've gone on austerity.  And yes, for those of you that are not quilters, quilting fabric is like fashion.  It changes from year to year.

But here's the problem.  I probably have enough fabric to make 100 quilts. This means that I could potentially spend years trying to use it all.  And what about the new projects?? And what about quilting all those quilts?? It all makes my head hurt.

So here's my attempt to start using up some of that fabric.  This is my version of a scrap quilt. It's my own design that I created one step at a time.  That's the way I like to design.  I only used fabric from my stash.

 It measures about 57"w x 68"h.

The center of the design is a hibiscus.  The background fabric behind the flower is a feedsack from the 1930's.  I must have bought it about 20 yrs ago.  Some of the other fabrics have also been sitting on my shelves for a long time.  I am thrilled that I got to use them and now they are gone - in a quilt.

To make this a total scrap quilt, I also cut up fabric from my stash to piece together a back for the quilt.  This was instead of using one big piece.  I was happy to use up more fabric for this.

I enjoy piecing the back for a quilt. It certainly adds interest and it makes the quilt reversible. 

And it helps to decrease my fabric stash.

Wednesday's Wanderings #33 - Fresh Produce

I remember the first time I ate an heirloom tomato.  It was a few years ago.  A group of us went out to lunch after quilt guild.  There was an heirloom tomato salad on the menu.  To be honest, I'm not a big vegetable eater, but I decided to give it a try. Wow!  It was unbelievably delicious.  My all knowing friends told me about a produce stand where I could buy them.

I stopped on the way home and bought a couple to bring home.  Two tomatoes cost me over $5.00, but I knew it was worth it.  My husband was skeptical and thought that I had gotten ripped off, until he tasted one,  We became converts.  Our favorite variety is Brandywine.

This week we made our annual trek to Lancaster to stock up on tomatoes.  I'm sure we will go again, but this time it was for lots of tomatoes to cook and save for the winter.  My husband just loves to cook.  He'll make sauce and roasted tomatoes for future meals.  This was his best purchase:

I don't know if you can see the price written on the box in the upper right corner.  It says $3.00.  Yes, $3.00 for a box full of plum tomatoes.  We didn't weigh the box, but it was heavy, really heavy, probably about 30 lbs.  I know where my husband will be for the next few days.

I love driving around Lancaster County this time of year.  Tomatoes are abundant and there are produce stands everywhere. They come in all shapes and sizes.  Many of them work on the honor system for paying.

Another thing I love when driving around are all the hand made signs for selling the produce. 

Vegetable folk art?

I even managed to stop and buy some fabric.

Yes, this is fabric!

I'm not really sure what I will make with these fabrics, but you can tell I was in the tomato mood.

And of course we had to buy tomatoes to eat right away. 

 Brandywine tomato bruschetta was the star of our dinner.  Yum.

So my WW  is a tribute to summer trips to Lancaster County and all those beautiful and tasty tomatoes and those great signs made to sell them.

I could become a vegetarian. 

 They can eat cake.  Right?

 

You Can Find Inspiration, Even In A Deli

Ideas for quilts can come from many places.  I went out to lunch the other day with my husband to a local deli and was mesmerized by the fabric on the benches.  During the entire meal I kept thinking about what a fun quilt this would be to create.

I have been further exploring dupioni silk this summer and decided to use it for this project.For piecing the silk needs to be stabilized.  I like to do this with either a woven or tricot fusible interfacing.  The interfacing needs to be applied with a damp press cloth.

 

For fusible applique, some fraying of the silk occurs when using the interfacing. 

 Because the dupioni is so coarsely woven, some fraying will always occur,

 but using only fusible web lessens the amount of fraying.

This is the piece on my design wall before I stitched it and added the circles.  

 I had doubts about the design and thought about putting it away. 

 But I decided to keep going.

The blanket stitching and the many colored circles made a huge difference.

I used a rayon thread to do the blanket stitching.

I handstiitched the circles down and quilted a swirl inside it.

I am still working on a name for it.  I was watching the Tour de France while I was quilting it.  Stitching around the circles, made me think about when the cyclists split and  ride around the roundabouts.  It also made me think about how the cyclists ride behind each other in the slipstream for decreased wind resistance. But I'm not enthralled with using those ideas for names.

Any ideas?

Happy Birthday

We got together for my new DIL's birthday. 

 She loves to cook.  I mean serious kind of cooking

.This was one of the gifts that her new husband (aka my son) gave her.

Can you guess what it is?

It's a truffle.

He said it was quite a production to buy it.

Loren made a Baked Alaska for dessert.  It was gorgeous.

She even brought her own "weapon".

This is what it looked like on the inside, with 2 flavors of  sorbet,

vanilla ice cream and a layer of confetti cake.A great dessert for the summer.

Happy Birthday Loren!

The Afterglow

There's a big smile on my face!

I had a great time co-hosting Creative Mojo,

even though someone may have had too many pineapple martinis.

(Here's the link if you want to listen:http://bit.ly/OdC73Y )

 

Last time I visited his "recording studio" aka his office, his books were arranged by topic.  I think Mr. Mark has had too much time on his hands and he re-arranged them by spine color:

It's very eyecatching but Mark admits he can't find what he's looking for.

And don't believe everything you read (VBG)

Mark's Blog

Wednesday's Wanderings #32 - Creative Mojo with Mark Lipinski

Today I am co-hosting Creative Mojo with Mark Lipinski. 

 I've done it once before, and I can't wait to do it again.

It is an internet radio show broadcast through the computer on the toginet network at 3PM EST.

www.toginet.com

But if you can't listen to it live, you can listen to it any time you would like by going to:

www.toginet.com/shows/creativemojo/   

 You can also download it as a podcast via itunes to listen any time that you want.

I will be at Mark's house and the equipment is in his office.  I'm not sure who the guests will be, but I know they will somehow be involved in the creative arts. They will be on air via the telephone.

Mark is a great guy to hang out with.  Although some people have told me that he can be outrageous, he has always been a gentleman with me - uplifting and joyous.

 

I have been playing with silk this week, so I used a small piece of it to make the base of the microphone.

I hand stitched "on the air" with rayon thread.

My WW block complete with Mark's signature.

 

So if you are near your computer at 3PM EST, tune in

and maybe you can be one of the callers that we talk to.