Still Stitching "And"

An NPR radio show this week asked this question: if you could go back and talk to your high school self, what would you say? Most men who called in urged their teen selves not to be afraid of the popular girls (bad advice: be afraid of them. Be VERY AFRAID). Women callers didn't care about the popular boys. They wanted their girlselves to stand straighter, stronger and with their true selves facing outward.

I thought about this a lot these past few days. So my advice to teenage me? In the lunchroom, concentrate less on where you sit and more on what you eat. If you remember, I explored this concept as it relates to stitching here, in my blogging infancy. Three years later, I find myself completely comfortable and at home anywhere in the stitching lunchroom.

Here's one side of me. Remember this?

I turned it into a gift for an amazing young woman who I taught to read Hebrew. She just recently converted to Judaism.

The embroidery is the Hebrew name she chose for herself, words that perfectly match the glow you feel in her presence: Shayna Or, or "beautiful light."

 

I feel so self-expressive and satisfied weaving these bits and pieces of scraps. But sometimes, the occasion calls for more than that. Here's Stefanie's chuppah (fermenting here):

As you can tell by the canine point of reference, its pretty big.

I've been appliqueing the circles to the base (and occasionally, to my sweatpants) all winter as we cycled through our Netflix and Acorn TV (a BBC salad bar, the best) play lists. I've got about 10 circles left to stitch down and then its time for fine-tuning: removing excess branches on the sides, putting their initials onto the tree, reconsidering the use of two birds made out of cloth bits their moms sent on to me. And then, figuring out what to do with the edges so that Mr. Wedding Planner can get it in place.   

Sometimes, I just have to follow rules. Liza and Kaffe invited me yet again to create a quilt for an upcoming book. (The one that will follow the book coming out in September 2016, for which I created this. So we're talking about September 2017, which feels like a date in a sci fi movie about the far distant future).

The quilt inside me was already named. "Auntie Em." Lots of little squares echoing Depression-era Kansas, like Auntie Em's faded old house dress. But the design itself eluded me. After listening to me whine one too many mornings, Liza kicked my butt to a magical place called The Quilt Index, which archives more than 50,000 quilts from the past. And I found her.

The archival record just says "Medallion, scraps. Circa 1930-1949." And while it comes from Connecticut and not Kansas, the person who donated it attributed it to "Great Aunt."  Good enough for me! I wish I too could make my quilt out of old workshirts and mattress ticking and maybe I will do that next. This time,the rules say new fabric from the Kaffe Fasssett Collective. Here's where I am so far:

I am still playing with choices for the outside borders. And my quilt will also have an outside border that is a series of 16-patch blocks nested on their heads (called "on point," like ballerinas only without broken toes).  She looks a little more Raggedy Ann and Andy than Auntie Em at this point but I will wrestle with the name at the end.

Same stitcher, different stitchings. Something my teenage self would never have been able to understand. That's why, while my heart goes out to that kid, I really and truly like the old lady version a lot better.

Gifts of Love

I've been busy striking the set of summer and starting preparations for winter camp, which, blessedly, brings me a project of love, for two young lovers.

ignore hearts and initials

 My cousin's daughter is getting married next July. Out of great love for my cousin, I had offered her son and his intended a quilted chuppah (the canopy covering the bridal party at a Jewish wedding ceremony). They were thankfully not interested and I never even thought about making the same offer to Stefanie.

Last month, at her engagement party, my cousin tells me that Stef wondered if I would make her a chuppah. She naturally felt out of place asking me but lucky for her, her mom and I can--and usually do--say anything to one another. I felt so very honored (and mightly ashamed that I had never made the offer). And yet, because I had just recently been paroled from the massive wedding One Block Wonder quilt, I was wary of taking on a project like this.

I learned from my last experience that for me, the gift of my stitching labors is really only a gift when it 1) comes from my heart and 2 ) allows me to express my creativity in my own way. So now what? What if I say yes and it turns out that her ideal chuppah and my worst nightmare look very much alike?  What if I decline and miss this very meaningful way to kiss my dearest cousin and her daughter?

Yikes.

I ran over to Himself, who was trying to hide from my family behind a large chafing dish. I  asked him whether he thought I should say yes. He offered his always astute and penetrating assessment:

"Do what you want to do."

"Yeah, but what do YOU think I should do?"

"I think you should do what you want to do."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"Do you know where the bathroom is?"

 I tried to receive an answer from within my soul, but since we were in a large barn with 100 people and a live country music band, the reception wasn't too great. And then I saw beautiful, brown-eyed Stefanie two-stepping across the room and I knew.

When she wandered over, I took both her hands, looked her in the eye and said, "I am pleased and honored to make you two a chuppah." I think I then choked up, either from emotion or because she was throwing her arms around my neck.

"Only there are some rules," I added fiercely. "We have to talk about what you want and see if its something I can do."

"All I want is for you to do it, Julie."

I wasn't going to give up. "We have to find a color, a design--"

"I love you. I will be so thrilled to have what ever you want to make me."

The perfect answer. And so that is how two gifts of love were exchanged in a gentleman farmer's ersatz barn on a Saturday night in suburban New Jersey. Somewhere in there, the groom was told, as most grooms are, that he had always wanted me to make a chuppah and he thanked me from the bottom of Stefanie's heart.

So that's how I have come to be working on this project. As you can see from my sketch, its going to be a large tree, with colorful circles spreading across and down to the ground. It has to fit onto an existing stand, which required multiple communications with a frantic florist reminiscent of that wacky wedding planner in Father of the Bride. It also required lots of addition and subtraction, which I count as particularly frightening forms of higher math.

I came up with a size--about 7 feet wide by nearly 5 feet high. It will be tacked on to an existing white chuppah by the florist's seamstress (who knew that florists had seamstresses??). After the wedding, Stefanie and Mr. Stefanie can decide whether I should add to it for a bed quilt or just finish it off to put on the wall (or in a drawer).

I am going to do it all by hand onto a background that is in turn backed with harem cloth. That way, there is a better chance that the entire structure will not collapse and send the florist (and his seamstress) to the hospital.

The first step is to make a tree on craft paper, cut it out and see how it looks on the background before cutting up pretty pricey hand-dyed fabric.  Sounds easy, until you remember my previous dissertations on my drawing skills.

These are scary trees, good if your wedding has a nice Zombie theme. Lucky for me, Himself and his magic pencil were in the general vicinity when I was throwing the sketchpad against the wall.

He did it on graph paper so I could enlarge and transfer it onto a large sheet of craft paper that we used to use in kindergarten. I did that all by myself!

Now, the tree trunk goes up on the wall on a rough of the background so I can see how it works.

I will have to add the branches but I am happy with this start. I've been auditioning all kinds of browns and grey hand-dyes and will build a tree from them the size of this template. And then I get to make circles--4, 5, and 6 inches--out of my tentative palette:

 I'm sure lots will change but for now, I'm pretty energized and excited.And any and all ideas are warmly appreciated.