Shirley Weitz

 Quilters grow,  here's the evidence. First, we have a fun keepsake that Shirley  made in 2002  for her daughter Sarah's Bat Mitzvah, using a wide variety of stuff including stencils, sequinned appliques, charms buttons and Judaic prints. (It's about 38" square).

  Two years later, Shirley sent me the very sophisticated embellished memory quilt. In a way, she explained, it developed from the same Bat Mitzvah.  

 "A few months before the event, my aunt gave me a 1912 photo of my maternal great-grandparents in Botosani, Romania.  That photograph became the subject of my bat mitzvah speech.  Even afterwards I was haunted by  the photograph, thinking about what lay behind their stern expressions.  I knew I wanted to somehow  incorporate it  into a quilt."

  "I saw a postcard listed on the Internet that showed Janow Trembowla, the shtetl in Galicia that my mother-in-law came from, and where she was hidden during the Holocaust.  Now I had two photographs.  Then I recalled that  many years before, I had found a photograph of the wooden synagogue in Janow Trembowla. I scanned that as well. Finally,  on the Internet I  found a photograph of Trembowla, the nearby larger town.

 " I used June Tailor's fabric inkjet transfer sheets to scan and print  the photographs. I took them all, some fabric and embellishments  - including skeleton leaves found at a Michael's (craft store) -  to  Natasha Kempers-Cullen's class in embellished art quilts at Quilting by the Lake in New York. Without too much of a plan,  I sewed together four panels of fabric, and stamped hamsa's randomly  on them in gold textile paint.  Using Natasha's technique,  I  laid the photographs, gold  and blue threads, some star of David glitter and sequins and the skeleton leaves under a layer of tulle. After carefully pinning the tulle, batting and a backing together, I machine quilted it with metallic thread, in a grid pattern.  I bordered the quilt with gold brocade ribbon with a vaguely European pattern.   I framed the whole thing in a gold frame."

  "It now is  hanging on my dining room wall.  It measures 14 1/2" x 19".   I think of the skeleton leaves and gold threads as tying together the  Judaic ancestry of our family, combining my own and my husband's genealogy, leading up to the photograph of our children, Sarah, now age 14 and Larry, now 24."    Contact Shirley at Shirleynj@aol.com

Ruth Harris

   Here it is folks: The ULTIMATE personalized double wedding  ring quilted huppah. This Oklahoma artist  had never seen a huppah before her niece asked her to make one.  She collected hand-tracings from brides' and grooms'  families, transferred them onto Wonder Under and then cut the shapes from fancy fabrics. Next, she arranged  the hands in a double wedding ring pattern---bride's family on one side, groom's on the other,  couple's fingers intertwined!  Names (and even wedding rings) are embroidered on the hands. She reports that the children attending the wedding were particularly fascinated by this huppah --- they placed their hands up against it and found they had grown in the three months since she'd collected the tracings! Ruth's email address is rhquilts@cox.net

 Finished size, 63" x 44".
(c) 2003, Ruth Harris

  This joyous and complex-looking huppah  was made entirely from  l/8 yard pieces of  striped fabric, from a series. Strips of the multicolored fabrics were sewn together, then simply cut into half-square triangles. See all those amazing Jewish stars? The Washington D.C- area maker, Esther Weiss, reports,  "The stars were by accident. I was working to balance the colors out in some orderly fashion and it must have been subconscious. I'm not usually lucky,  although perhaps this quilt is. The owners  just had their first child. He's great!" It's hard to see in this photo, but there's a lovely Tree of Life quilted in the center, in metallic threads. Esther's email address is esthermcw@hotmail.com. 

Finished size 66" x 66"
  (c) 1997, Esther Weiss.  

Art quilter Jeri Riggs started this signature quilt TWO WEEKS before  her son's bar mitzvah!  (Don't try this at home). It was pieced from  light-colored hexagons, with two dark equilateral triangles attached to each, then sewn together in rows: "There are no set in seams,"  she explains.

   The quilt was still just a top for the bar mitzvah.  She ironed  freezer paper to  the backs of the light-colored pieces, to stabilize them during signing.   (She had some practice fabric available at the bar mitzvah, which she also turned into an art quilt!). 

   And by the way, she trimmed the dress, dyed the shoes, beaded the necklace, AND made a Torah cover for the event.  And look what a nice son she raised! Jeri is a serious overachiever, as you will see from her breathtaking art quilts  at   http://www.jeririggs.com .

Northern California quilter Ruth Rosenberg reports that this intricate interlaced stars pattern (right) was inspired by a Marilyn Felber class.  She hopes to hang it in her synagogue's small chapel. The size is 45" x 45".

(Left) If this cool geometric matzoh cover looks vaguely famliar, there's a reason---the pattern is from Mae Tupa Rockland's book,  'The New Work of Our Hands.'  "It's all Y-seams," Ruth reports casually (Yikes!). She not only pulled off those fussy seams, but also refreshed the color pallette, and embellished with the  Hebrew word for 'matzoh',  using a Pfaff digital disc. Ruth's email address is   rsr0612@yahoo.com.

This Jerusalem-based quilter has  made a wide variety of quilts, with both Jewish and non-denominational themes. Her  'Chanukah Menorah' quilt, with a gently gradated background, is one of my favorites. And she has made one of the most astonishing photo-memory quilts I have ever seen-- with 99 photos set into the top of a fantastic arrangement of baby blocks. See all her work at http://www.geocities.com/studiodebbie/quilts.html
 

 Ricki Moffat

Her work simply  knocked my socks off.    Check out especially the Tallis and the Elijah-late-on-Passover-night-after-drinking-from-all-those-cups portrait. Click on 'Quilts' after you get to this address:  http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/ricki_moffat/ (when you're done looking at them, click on 'Socks'!) Her email address is ricki_moffat@yahoo.ca
 

You may have seen this well-known New Jersey quilter's huppot and matzoh covers on Simply Quilts.  Two of her huppot appeared my  Quilters' Newsletter Magazine article, July/August 03. She now has a website! It's at  http://www.huppah.com. Click on 'Samples' to see her work.
 

MORE COMING SOON!

 especially if you

EMAIL ME