Paper and Threads

None of my current "threads" projects are close to being done.  I have 2 wedding quilts and one baby quilt in the process of being quilted or pieced.  And I'm hand piecing a Liberty of London quilt during this year of London travel to have a wonderful textile memory to go along with my travel sketchbooks. 

I just learned that many visitors to this blog find it because they search on images of chuppahs (as I once did when I started thinking about this project when my first child was married).  The images previously posted all show them suspended at the wedding ceremonies of my 3 children.  Here are photos of all 3 showing the actual design.  They are all 6 feet square and made from hand-dyed crepe de chine that I made using procion MX dyes.  They are hand quilted using silk thread.  The yellow/pink chuppah was made using a wax resist.  The blue chuppah is machine appliqued using many individually dyed fabrics, and the autumn leaves chuppah was drawn with a commercial silk resist from Prochem and painted with dyes using watercolor methods.  

Posted by Shirley at 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

EDM Challenge #80: Part 2

Although being with my whole family makes me happiest (see part 1 below), my Bernina 1030 sewing machine is also a source of enormous happiness.  I have had a sewing machine for 50 years - sometimes a rented one (poor student days) and sometimes a very inexpensive one.  The above Bernina was purchased in 1989 and as I told my husband, it cost almost as much as our first car - a new VW bug purchased in 1967!  I don't use the sewing machine for days at a time, but when I need to have it serviced I feel very lost.  The months leading up to Christmas are busiest - but I also set aside one week during the cold weather in February and call it "creative week."  I try to arrange my schedule so it is the week before President's Day so I have an extra long weekend before I need to go back to work.  I love immersing myself in projects all day, every day, for 8-10 days and each year have done something different - including making lots of baby clothes for our first grandchild who was due 4 months later, dying silk for a wedding chuppah and making the 6' by 6' pieced top that was then quilted, cutting out fabric pieces for group wedding quilts, and planning and making baby quilts.  Two year's ago I designed a machine quilted whole cloth quilt with cotton velveteen on one side and 100% pima cotton on the other.  I made 5 of these already for immediate family members and still have more to be made.  These quilts precipitated the last emergency service visit - velvet lint buildup that paralyzed the feed dogs!   

Posted by Shirley at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

This is the first wedding chuppah that I made (Puck Building, Soho July 1999).  While wandering through the Jewish Museum design shop in New York City, right after my daughter was engaged, I saw a painted silk chuppah that could be commisioned by a local artist.  At that time I was learning how to use procion MX dyes to "paint silk" using 16 mummi white silk crepe de chine and wax resist.  I immediately realized that I could make one if my daughter planned a chuppah for their wedding.  These colors were mixed from the 3 primary color dyes to match the flower colors that my daughter selected for her wedding.  The streamers at all 4 corners are made from tubes of the same color dyed silk.  The piece was quilted using silk thread.  The design was created from small bits and pieces from multiple illustrations in a Dover publication.

To see the other two chuppahs that I made for my children's weddings click on "Threads" in the sidebar to the right and bypass all paper entries.  Thank goodness I don't have a 4th child!  Each one of these took me approximately 6 months to make because I had a full time job and could only devote small blocks of time to the project. 

My newest daughter-in-law just made me a large framed photo with each couple standing under their chuppah taking their wedding vows and a beautifully written piece entitled "What is a Chuppah" that she used as a reading at their wedding.  It makes me ecstatic to have this composite visual memory of 3 of the happiest days of our lives. 

Posted by Shirley at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is the wedding chuppah that I made for my oldest son's wedding which took place outdoors in July 2004.  The bride asked for turquoise and shades of pink and chose this traditional applique design which was adapted from a commercial pattern by Nancy Pearson.  The silk crepe de chine was dyed with procion MX dyes and then the flower heart wreath was created with machine applique.  Every petal was a different color and the machine thread had to be changed for each!!  The white border on the top was part of the florist's canopy and I was unable to attach the 6 foot silk quilt any other way.  The streamers were all tubes of silk fabric that were dyed with the dyes that I mixed for the quilt. 

Posted by Shirley at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been spending most of my leisure time since Christmas sketching and painting and I needed to remind myself why I named this website Paper and Threads.  For most of my lifetime my passion was for fabric.  As I began to dye my own fabric (background and pink fabric here), I learned about painting fabric with instant set dyes or thickened procion MX dyes.  This required me to improve my drawing and sketching ability and I reopened my sketchbook and bought some watercolor paints.  This Quilt Journal Page (so named in the quilt community because it is exactly 8.5 X 11 inches) is one of many that I made to play with designs and some of my dyed/painted fabric.  She hangs above my sewing machine as my muse....

Posted by Shirley at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)