Inspiration: A Quiet Place in the Galilee

On my family’s recent visit to Israel we spent a couple of days relaxing in a beautiful, quiet zimmer (guest house) in the Galilee. The guest house, Hemdatya (http://www.hemdatya.co.il/english/index.html), is located in Ilaniya, the first Jewish agricultural settlement in the Galilee, which was established in 1900 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilaniya).

The guest rooms are converted old structures, which were part of a farmhouse complex built at the beginning of the previous century. They were lovingly restored with much attention to detail and with attention to sound ecological practices. The resulting accommodations are fully up to modern standards, yet keep the old atmosphere intact. The place is a truly magical sanctuary where three generations of my family were able to relax together.

I arrived in Israel with a suitcase-full of handmade gifts for all members of my family. These gifts looked very much in place in everyone’s respective rooms in the Galilee.

This is the laptop bag I made for my sister, set on the beautifully-painted tiles of the floor in her room:

For my mom, I made a purse with a matching cell-phone case, both of which looked great on the old, roughly-woven stool we found in my parents’ room:

And the handmade i-pad cover I made for my father looked nice on the wooden counter:

The courtyard we all shared was covered with wild, tall and gorgeous annuals, in many different shades of pink:

Each room had a little patio or terrace outside, where we enjoyed a glass of local wine when relaxing in the evenings. This, for example, is the grapevine-covered patio outside my parents’ room:

The floor in their room, my dad said, had the same pattern his grandfather's house featured in Jerusalem at the turn of the previous century. The mud-covered walls and restored fireplace added nice details:

I liked many of the little touches and special decor throughout the complex:

And the furniture, too:

And as for the amazing breakfasts, made from locally-grown vegetables (some from Hemdatya’s very own vegetable garden!) and which included super-fresh cheeses made from milk collected from the owner’s own goats, well, let’s just say that I am sure to fantasize about THOSE for many months to come...

The Scrap Project: Bookmarks!

I admit to being slightly obsessed with recycling, reusing and repurposing. I just can’t help it--discarding things that still have some use in them makes me feel really bad… This might be blamed on genes (dad, you know what I'm talking about!), or just on the sad state of our over-materialistic, over-consuming society (of which I am very much a part). No matter the reason, there it is.

I already found several uses for some of my bigger scraps, and also for some of my narrower scraps of soft fabrics. But I also have many very narrow scraps of thicker upholstery fabrics that just couldn’t be folded and ironed and made into button loops.

Some of these I reluctantly threw. Others I piled up in my scrap box, hoping to use eventually. And then, one day, I got an idea: bookmarks!

We are all avid readers in my family. Even my first-grader is starting to spend more and more time with books. And we all need LOTS of bookmarks.

It’s a win win!!

Inspiration: Openings in Walls

I love walking the streets of history-filled cities and looking at aged walls and the old doors and windows within them. I find these architectural features interesting aesthetically, as they are often covered by many layers of paint or patches. I often wonder about the lives these silent witnesses saw, about the generations of people who lived behind them. Who walked through these doors?, I wonder; Who opened and closed these windows? Sometimes there is an open crack in a door, or a window is left unclosed, allowing a quick peek into the lives that currently hide beyond. Sometimes everything is shut, leaving room for the imagination.

My family and I recently visited Israel, where old neighborhoods abound. There, I found myself surrounded by the beauty of the past.

These windows, for example, peeked at me from walls in the old city of Jerusalem, walls covered with Jerusalem stone:

And in the Lower Galilee I admired old buildings in the Circassian village of Kafr Kama, where the houses are built from black basalt rock:

Getting Ready for SVOS

A few months ago I signed up to show my work at the Silicon Valley Open Studios event (http://www.svos.org/), which takes place over three weekends in May. I will be showing on the first and third weekends only, the first of which is … TOMORROW! I’ve been preparing for this for the last several months, designing and sewing whenever possible. My Spring Collection of handbags was designed with Open Studios in mind, as this is where I’ll be showing it for the very first time!

On both weekends I will be showing together with several other artists, each working in a different media. We already began setting everything up:

I am looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting many new people this weekend!

The Scrap Project: A Cross-body Pouch

I recently made a new cross-body pouch.

After cutting my Spring Bag collection I was left with a pile of small-yet-gorgeous pieces of various pink and lime-green fabrics.

My fingers were twitching to make use of them somehow. So I lay them all on the floor, and started arranging and rearranging them in different combinations. Once I found the composition I liked, I sewed several pieces together:

I then inserted a pink zipper:

And then another:

The piece on top, cut from the flap of another bag, reminded me of the arched doors and windows so typical to many old buildings in my native Israel, which I always loved.

I found a luxurious piece of silk for the lining

and cut it to size.

I sewed, ironed, pinned and turned. When the bag was ready, I added matching tassels to strengthen its oriental look and make it more interesting:

I liked this one so much that I decided to make it my own. An early Mothers' Day gift for myself. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it just happens to match many of my clothes :-)