Quilters and their fabric; a long and complicated story

But a lovely love story.  I can identify almost all the fabric I have which is pretty amazing as I have a lot. After moving three times in the past ten years I have pared down a little. But I have been collecting fabric since I started quilting in 1979 so I not only have a lot but I have a historic collection, easily a span of over a hundred years. For a long time I loved flowered patterns and 1930's fabric - vintage not repro - which I scoured estate sales to find until the internet came along.  Remember that distant time before the internet? Right now my focus is on reducing my collection. By using up or selling or freecycling as the fabric dictates. The horrible weather this past winter certainly helped keep me on track and in my sewing room working. I organized my stash into a yardage cabinet, a half-yard-to-get-cut-up-into-strips cabinets, a fat quarter cabinet and a scrap cabinet. Whew! I've been loosely following Bonnie Hunter's scrap saver system which is brillant. Even if you don't follow her exact method - which is designed for the way she makes quilts - it really gets you thinking about organizing your fabric to work with the way you work.

Mahane Yehuda - Prophets and Produce

The Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem is noisy, bustling, fragrant, and in a word - wonderful. The indoor stalls have a profusion of produce, cheese, housewares, almost everything you could need. There are outdoor stalls too and the surrounding Nachalot neighborhood is full of charming, old buildings on winding, hilly streets.









Who is the prophet?

J'Lem

The city is much more beautiful than I had expected. I found my apartment without too much trouble and it was a bit dustier than I would have liked, but I soon realized why. Jerusalem is so dry! You feel it in your skin almost immediately. There are metal grates you can pull down over the windows and balcony doors to keep the heat of the day out but the dust comes in anyway. And they don't seem very big on screens! There is a heat wave going on, about 20 degrees hotter than usual. On the Farenheit scale. I don't think I can learn the celsius system now. It is really difficult walking the hills during the day and staying hydrated. As much water as I drink when I come home I still want three large glasses of water.

All of the buildings are made of Jerusalem stone, no more than four stories in my neighborhood. And the building styles are so similar it's hard to tell when things were built. It's also hard to not get lost as the streets curve and wind on the hilly terrain and the names change every three blocks and every intersection practically looks the same! Well, I'm exaggerating a little as it does look classy but is hard on the newcomer.

There are many trees around our apartment which makes it feel quite private and shady. There is a school to the east of us which is closed for the summer with just a caretaker in the basement apartment. To the north of us is a vacant lot and the street to the west dead-ends in a set of steep stairs so only motorists who live on the block drive up it. Luckily out apartment faces the back of the building, not the street. It does get lovely breezes and can be quite cool at night.

Snack Time flight

All of my worries and trepidations about coming to Israel evaporated on the El Al flight. It was like traveling with friends and relatives, assuming your circle runs the gamut from nose rings to sidelocks. At first it seemed normal, except the airline attendants were much friendlier. But every time I got up to stretch I started talking to someone who had a really neat story. We were all the same whether coming to Israel to study, visit family, do business, whatever. There was such a relaxed atmosphere and, as i had been warned, way too much food! I learned not to try and go to the bathroom while they're davenning. But then there was snack time. I noticed people starting to head to the back of the plane in their stocking feet - yoga? - and coming back with drinks and cookies. I investigated and sure enough there the passengers were lined up like little summer campers with the counselors doling out snacks. I was mesmerized! I'll always fly El Al - thanks, Diane. Plus I got lots of valuable travel tips/

Helvetica

Cannot imagine any other typeface that could inspire a movie, and such a great one at that. I laughed, I cried, I thought about how many millions of interesting things there are in the world and how can there possibly be time for them all.

It probably won't make it to many multi-plexes but it should work okay on the little screen too. Netflix rules!!

Our Old House - first of many

Having moved eighteen months ago from a place we had lived in for 16 years I am still discovering new levels of displacement and dislocation. Downsizing is an amazing amount of work and even with a lot of help from friends it still took almost a year from start to finish. Like a mixed breeding of Pandora's Box and circus clown car every closet I opened generated an amazing amount of stuff about which decisions needed to be made. We moved to a place that's about half the size in footprint but without all the closets, full basement, etc of our old beautiful house. When I want something, or someone in my family asks where something is I start, but then have to stop because I know it's going to be where it used to be in our old house. Even if one's move is voluntary, which ours mostly was, it still feels like banishment. It is difficult to think of someone else enjoying all that work I did in making it ours. All the choices, decisions, and little details that made it so satisfying a project. A small consolation is that the man who bought it said as he was leaving the first time "This is my dream house". Everyone else found fault.

I think about the skylights in my sewing room, which was a temple, and remember the snow falling on them, the sound of rain beating on the peaked roof. Luckily I took lots of pictures which I look at sometime after my daughter has gone to bed and no one can catch me visiting our old life. Reminds of a Woody Allen skit from an early movie - I don't remember which - where the old Russian character takes our a plod of earth from his voluminous garment and says "Next year we will build a summer house." I assume Allen was making fun of Chekov but I totally identify. It's hard to leave such a big piece of oneself behind.

This is our second summer and I have been looking at the garden and thinking about trying to make it better. I got rid of all the 'serious' gardening stuff - composter, wheelbarrows, etc. which my friend Catherine questioned the wisdom of. "No, I'm done" I claimed, like I was rejecting a religious conversion or fad. I couldn't even think that I would want to have a garden again but I feel the stirrings.

How could I resist a blog design with polka dots! One of my favorite patterns. As a quilter I'm always interested in how people organize their fabric. There is no one 'right' way of course but I hungrily devour descriptions and details from other fabriholics as to how they organize their stashes. Please note that 'stash' is the same word used by drug addicts to describe where they hide their drugs. Luckily fabric is legal so we only keep it behind closet doors to -

• keep it from fading
• keep our SO from seeing how much we have
• keep our fellow quilters from being jealous

So I re-organized my considerable stash to separate out the striped, plaid and polka dot fabric from the color groupings they were in. It was awesome! It really made them more accessible. One of the things I notice about old quilts is how varied their fabric choices are, whether by design or necessity. Quilts today tend to be more homogeneous in their fabric selections.