The Scrap Project: Greeting Cards

I’m sure you are all familiar with one of my favorite children’s stories, the one about Joseph’s overcoat. Versions of this story, based on an old folk tale, have been written into many books, such as Phoebe Gilman’s Something from Nothing, or Simms Tabak’s Joseph Had a Little Overcoat. The story is about an item (a coat, a blanket or something else, depending on the version) that Joseph's grandfather, a tailor, sewes for him. The boy outgrows/tears it, and so the grandfather keeps transforming it into smaller and smaller objects, until in the end the last one is lost and a story is written in its stead, hence the making of “something out of nothing.”

I find this to be a beautiful, touching story about love, cross-generational connections, resourcefulness and frugality, amongst other things. Joseph’s grandfather expresses his love for the boy through the things he sews for him. He keeps coming up with new creative ideas, all for perfectly useful items. He literally turns trash into gold over and over again, by re-purposing, up-cycling, and recycling. In that, he is, of course, being completely eco-friendly (although the story is set at a time and place where poverty, not green ideology, was the main incentive).

When I work, I often think of this story. I feel a kind of kinship with Joseph’s grandfather, and not only because we both share a love for sewing. Like the grandfather, I, too, express affection through making, especially when I create something for people I care about, be they family members or friends. I know how the grandfather felt because I also derive much satisfaction from seeing people use my creations. And, like the grandfather I, too, am passionate about turning useless materials into useful items, and about constantly coming up with ideas for new products. Likewise, I eschew waste and enjoy finding innovative ways to use every little scrap of fabric. Finally, I suppose that this blog itself could be counted as a way to “make something out of nothing” :-)

I work with many beautiful fabrics, each a piece of art on it’s own. The things I make usually call for big pieces of cloth. Yet, inevitably, the creative process leaves me with many scraps, sometimes very small bits, that I just don’t have the heart to throw away. I collect them all, and every now and then try to find ways to use them. Over the last few months I’ve been using small cotton pieces to make notebook loops, and small fragments of upholstery fabrics to make pouches or bookmarks. Right before Valentine’s Day I used some of my scraps to make Valentine cards, and I just LOVE how they turned out!

The card above was born from my treasure pile of tiny fragments:

I picked the pieces I found suitable, and cut one into a heart shape:

I appliqued it, added another heart in the middle, and appliqued that one, too. Then I embroidered all around with a gold-colored embroidery floss that matched the background fabric:

When that was done, I sewed the entire piece onto a cardboard card:

Voilà! A beautiful, original and entirely useful piece of art!

Creating this was so much fun, that I proceeded to make a few more:

Working on cards is somewhere between painting and quilting. There are endless possibilities for combining colors, patterns and textures. At the same time, however, the medium is also limiting, for the pieces are quite small (all my cards were 4”x6”), which can make cutting and sewing difficult.

I later scanned my cards, loaded them onto Zazzle, and created a print-on-demand collection. I then ordered a few for myself, to see what they looked like. I couldn’t be happier with the result: the first picture in this post shows me holding one!

Since then I made yet more greeting cards, and enjoyed every minute of the process. This is surely something I'd like to keep playing with! If you have ideas about what kind of cards you will find useful, I will love to hear from you!

A New Shop Banner

My little sewing room has seen a lot of activity since I tidied it up a few weeks ago. And while I can’t say it remained perfectly tidy, I must note that the new organizing system seems to be working. Despite all the different things I’ve been creating simultaneously, it surprisingly stayed in a completely manageable state!

If you’ve been following my previous posts and my Facebook Page you might have gotten a hint as to some of the projects I’ve been working on lately. Today I’m excited to share the work I’ve done this week on a shop banner:

I became obsessed with sewing a little over a year ago, and since then participated in three or four small crafts fairs. For the very first fair my daughter laboriously prepared a nice paper banner, which we laminated for durability. When I arrived at the fair, however, I was saddened to realize I forgot it at home… By the time the second fair came around many months later, the banner simply disappeared. I kept thinking I should make a new one, from actual fabric, but simply couldn’t find the time. And so, for the remainder of the fairs in 2016 my booth remained bannerless.

One of my goals for this year is to participate in more vending vanues than last year. My first small event for 2017 will be happening tomorrow. And so it occurred to me that perhaps the time has finally come to make a real shop banner.

I’ve been thinking a lot about which colors I want to use. I have many small pieces in different shades of blue, so at first I thought I should make it blue. I also considered a palate of fall colors, since I really like those, too. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that I really didn’t have a choice at all. An ANY Texture banner would just have to be in shades of purple and magenta, just like my Give a Hand art quilt. As my mom could attest, I’ve simply always been a purple girl…

And so, I assembled all the purple/dark pink fabrics I could put my hands on, and started playing with different combinations:

I settled on a composition I liked for the background, and sewed all the pieces together:

I then zig-zagged over all the seams to keep the piece flat, and also to give it some additional color nuances:

Then I chose fabrics for the letters, and for the first time doubted whether it was wise to choose a shop name that was ten-letters long…

My kids don’t realize it, but sewing actually requires quite a lot of math. For this project, for example, I had to measure everything and figure out the maximum size of each letter. I proceeded to cut all the fabrics accordingly:

Once again, I played around with the order of the colors, until I settled on an order I liked. Then I drew all the letters onto the fabrics and cut them out:

I arranged the letters on the background, to see how they fit and how it looks:

Originally, I wanted to hand applique everything. Since I needed the banner sooner rather than later, however, and since hand appliqueing can take many days, I decided to machine applique it instead:

This is what my banner looked like after I finished attaching all the letters:

At this point I noticed that the “t” in “Texture” was too close in tone to the background, and that it kind of disappeared from afar. So I decided to hand applique it with a bright changing-tone magenta embroidery floss, to give it a stronger outline:

The very first picture in this post is what the final banner looks like at the moment. It will be perfectly functional for tomorrow’s purposes, but for me it is not quite finished yet. I still want to hand applique all the letter, and maybe add a subtitle, or even a few decorations. I will have to think about it some more...

The Neglected Art of Self Love

It’s that time of year again, with Valentine’s Day just around the corner. If you are like me, and I think many of us in today’s fast-paced world are, you probably constantly find yourself overwhelmingly busy, running around all day long doing things for other people. Amidst the craziness of tending to others’ needs, we often forget to take care of ourselves.

To make things worse, nowadays, in addition to the everyday stress many of us normally live with, there are the added tensions brought about by a precarious world. My anxiety level shoots up when I open the newspaper in the morning, and every time I listen to the news. Judging by the increasing number of newspaper articles about self-soothing and relaxation, I'll make a wild bet that I’m not the only one who feels this way.

So, with the Holiday of Love upon us, I wanted to re-state the obvious and remind everyone that loving others has to start with loving oneself. Safety regulations on airplanes stress that you should put an oxygen mask on yourself before tending to other people. The same goes for Tikkun O’lam, Hebrew for “Fixing the World.” There is great want all about us, as well as much that requires mending in the world. But in order to meet those needs and do the fixing, we all must take care of ourselves first.  

There are as many methods of self-caring as there are individuals, but here I will note only the most basic, obvious ones, which also happen to be the things that work for me. You might be practicing some or all already, which is great. But if not, perhaps you’d like to consider trying some. Who knows, these might help you, too:

1. Get enough sleep. I know too many people who don’t have time to sleep and who are constantly sleep-deprived. These people might get more done in the short run, but in the long run they will end up paying a heavy toll. We need sleep, and when we don’t get enough of it we simply don’t function well. Sleep enough and you will be a lot more efficient when awake. You will also see improvements in your mood, health, and general well-being.

2. Eat well. We keep hearing this over and over, to the point of rolling our eyes when hearing it once more. Yet, I have intelligent, educated friends who still skip meals to save time. Healthy eating, just like sleep, is a basic human need. You all know the drill: food should be nutritious, fresh, colorful, balanced, minimally-processed and organic when possible. You might save a few minutes by skipping a meal, but the long-term damages will be a lot costlier.

3. Exercise. That’s a hard one, I admit, for it requires a lot of self discipline, at least for some of us. It’s easy to forgo exercise, but study after study proves just how important it is to keep moving. Exercise improves everything from mood to weight to health to life span. Make sure to find time to move, at least a few times a week. And if you have time constraints, research shows that even a one-minute-a-day intense workout can improve fitness.

4. Pause. Take a few moments each day to stop running about and just be with yourself and relax. Sip a cup of coffee. Stare out the window. Breath. Clear your mind for a few still moments.

5. Be mindful. David Gelles wrote an entire series of mindfulness articles in the New York Times lately. What he is trying to say, I think, is that we should all take the time to be present in the here and now, concentrate on what we are doing (rather than on what we did, what we should have done, what we will do next, or what we should be doing next), and simply, genuinely live the moment. If you think about it, the present is all we really have, and is the only thing we can actually control. The past is over, and despite our constant, long and elaborate plans for the future, no one really knows what the day will bring.

6. Spend time with people you care about. Humans evolved to be social creatures. Spending time with others does wonders to our well-being, improves health and even makes us live longer. Find time to hang out with your family. Make a conscious effort to meet a friend. This, after all, is what life is all about.

7. Hug. Yes, you read that right. Give and get a hug every day, the more the better! There is clear data that proves that touching other people is good for you. Necessary even. And if you can’t find anyone to hug, cuddling with a pet is the next best thing.

8. Smile. The simple act of smiling, it turns out, has many benefits. It reduces stress, improves mood and makes you more productive, to name some. It is, in fact, so beneficial, that even fake smiling helps! And if you smile at a stranger, you get the added bonus of bringing a ray of sunshine into someone else's day. If that’s not a small step towards fixing the world, what is?

9. Spend time in nature. Being outdoors, exposed to the sun and around plants has numerous gains. It definitely soothes the soul, so carve a piece of your day to be outside. This includes gardening, walking, hiking, or any other outdoors activity. Even just sitting outside exposes you to sunlight, which will do wonders to your mood.

And finally, if things get really bad,

10. Disconnect! It’s OK to take time off from news or social media if that is what will save your sanity. Turn off the TV. Put the newspaper away. Don’t browse social media. Give yourself the permission and time to heal and recuperate.

And whatever you do, never lose hope! There is much goodness in you, in the people around you and in the world. So when you get overwhelmed, think positive and keep on hoping! Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

A New Year in My Studio

I returned from my travels energized and ready to work. So after a few days of unpacking and many loads of laundry, I eagerly walked into my sewing room … only to be overwhelmed by the mess:

As I mentioned a while back, I sew in our guest room, which only a little over a year ago served many family functions. At that time, it was good enough for occasional quilting, but, as I quickly discovered, was completely unsuitable for more intense sewing. In the ensuing months, therefore, I did my best to make the room more sewing-friendly. First, I evicted my daughter's’ piano. Then I raided IKEA and purchased perfectly-sized cabinets to hold my growing stacks of fabric. I built them and painted them together with my kids, and was very happy with the result. The room became a me-only zone (except for when we had guests), and the kids were warned against trodding on anything important. It worked. For a while, anyway.

In my defense I must note that the room is rather small. Or at least--the portion of it that I can actually use. More than half the space is taken by the bed. The rest of the room accommodates my sewing table, cutting table (which is also a guest desk), my sewing/desk chair and the rocking chair, which our guests like using when here. When you add the ironing board to the mix, there is hardly any space left for me to move.

When I look at pictures of other people’s spacious studios, I get somewhat envious. But this little room is all I have, and all I am going to have in the foreseeable future. And I actually like it, really, with its warm, cozy feeling and it’s big windows overlooking the garden. I just have to make it work.

Over the last few months I realized that I don’t only need places to store my raw fabrics and materials, but also places to put the different projects I’m working on. I tend to work on several things simultaneously, and so almost all the time have products in various stages of productions. When I work on journal covers, for example, I work on a few at once. I have some that are cut and ready to sew, others that are partially sewn and ready to iron. I have those that already have interfacing, but which need a button. Others already have buttons but are waiting for loops. And each of these stages requires a little pile of its own. Over time, the piles multiply, my kids add torn things for me to fix, and in no time there is, once again, a ginormous mess.

Alas, there is no space for more cabinets or shelves in this room. In the last couple of weeks, therefore, I chose the next best thing. I ventured to Target, returning with a few clear plastic boxes and some plastic drawers. I don’t normally like plastic, but these seemed to be the best solution. I spent many days tidying, sorting, organizing and labeling. Now every tiny space in the room is utilized. There are plastic boxes under the bed containing fabrics that are already matched and waiting to be cut:

Cut fabrics waiting to be sewn are stored under the cutting table:

Granted, I will still need the floor for bigger items, but at lease more things have a permanent home now. And I am working on some work-related New Year's Resolutions, to help keep it all under control... For now, I can see the carpet again, and have room to breath. And that feels great! A new year, an organized studio!