Eph + Eph, or How to Make A Chuppah

Sometimes you show up to graduate school and find out that another cohort-mate went to your alma mater, albeit 6 years after you did. Then you bond over purple cows, and become friends and office-mates. You meet his partner (who also attended your alma mater), who eventually moves to town, and you hang out some more. Eventually they get engaged and you offer to make their chuppah (wedding canopy) and, finally, about 4 months before the wedding, it's time to make it. So, how to make your friends a chuppah, in 10 easy steps.

1. Have friends who also have thoughts about design. A&Y looked through my blog and some flickr groups and we met to discuss what they liked and found compelling -- something modern, something with purples and blues, and something containing both regularity and surprise. I suggested a modern, random half-square triangle design, and they agreed -- provided they could choose the colors.

2. Ideally your friends have an eye for color too. We took a field trip to Pink Castle Fabrics, back when it was still in Brenda and Jason's basement. There they learned that fabric is mesmerizing and captivating and makes decision-making difficult. They found out that there are a lot of shades of blue and gray and yellow and white (and many fewer of purple). But they persevered and selected a fabulous stack o' fabric which consisted of: white, lake, marine {more aqua-blue than slate-blue in real life}, regal {more purple-y than it looks on the screen or in pictures}, charcoal, and yellow. I confess I was a little unsure of the lake blue at first, wondering if it was too pale, but it worked well.

3. Start cutting (6" strips, cut into 6" squares). I started cutting at a crafty meet-up, where Rae dubbed the bundle of solids, "vestment-like."  Makes a lot of sense for a wedding canopy!

4. Sew: I divvied up the squares into factorial-like piles and started sewing. Somewhere along the way, my arithmetic went awry and as I finished -- or so I thought -- trimming the squares (down to 5 5/8"), I realized I needed about 18 more squares. At which point I grabbed some fabric, cut some squares, and sewed them together, without much thought as to the precise number of squares per color.

5. Iron for awhile. Consider vacuuming the "design floor." Get all determined and sweep and vacuum said floor. Start laying out squares. Move around as seems wise, or possibly because you step on some squares and mess up the order.

6. Maintain some semblance of order. As you may be able to see, I made myself little tags (right bottom) to keep the rows in order. For what may have been the first time ever, I did not mess up the order and need to unpick and resew. That might never ever happen again. But I think it's a strong endorsement of tagging rows in some fashion (mine are bits of fabrics with numbers written on them -- very high tech!).

7. Press seams for some time. Catch up on the season finales of NCIS, NCIS-LA, Castle, and whatever other shows you like.

8. Baste. I used a white flannel sheet as batting and a white cotton sheet as backing. I basted it over my ironing board, which I find is the best way to keep everything aligned, tight (I iron the layers as I pin baste, thereby smoothing out any wrinkles).

9. Quilt. I opted for what I like to think of as a lattice-like curved grid (a technical term to be sure). On the top I used white thread, and on the back I used white, purple, and yellow (purple and yellow being ze college colors and all).

10. Bind (in Kona Regal) and admire your handiwork. Also revel in finishing 2 weeks before the wedding and one week before your friends need the chuppah.

Enjoy watching two lovely people get married. Celebrate with them, think lovely thoughts about the ceremony (sunburn notwithstanding), take lots of pictures, play with fun filters, and wonder why capturing the gorgeous deep purple is so so hard.

Read more...

Chuppah in Action

Beth and Harley's wedding was this weekend, and the chuppah looked wonderful, if I do say so myself. Alas, my camera decided to accelerate its death this weekend, leaving me with mostly useless pictures of dark blobs. However, pictures from other people in attendance are starting to tricle in (or trickle to facebook!), and I'll post them as I encounter them.

First, an up-close, stained-glass-like view:


And, just for the heck of it, a watercolor-like version:


This was the ketubah, which the chuppah was designed to complement:

And, finally, the view of the full chuppah.

I'm hoping to acquire a picture of the chuppah and ketubah together because they made a fine visual pair.

*all photos posted here courtesy Marlene Seidel

Read more...

All Bound Up

I spent the morning binding the chuppah for Beth and Harley (it really needs a more catchy and descriptive name...I'm still waiting for the epiphany or the revelation in the form of a comment by one of you!).

I wasn't sure what fabric to use for the binding -- to be honest, I didn't have enough yardage of many of the dark fabrics (the binding required a touch over a half-yard) so I only had 2 dark options from which to choose. Which raised the question of whether one of the medium or light variations would work, or whether a multi-fabric binding would be better. I decided that a medium or light binding might distract too much. While it might pull the eye toward the light center, I thought it might frame the chuppah too well, and stop the eye from meandering across the chuppah which is more interesting to me. I've used multi-fabric bindings before, but I thought it would be too busy here. There's so much going on in the center that I want viewers to see that I decided the quilt needs a single fabric binding. So I was back to 2 choices, and I'm really glad I opted for the green dots. It fits well in the medium/dark range and pulls the whole design together.

I'm going to wait until after the wedding to post any more full pictures so you're stuck with several views of the binding for now. I had fun playing with my camera and the little sunlight peeking through the clouds this morning.

The blurred effect.

Were it not for one of my hairs poking out from the middle of this picture, I think it would be my favorite. As you can see from the little bits of white showing through, I backed the chuppah with white flannel. I like using flannel for chuppah backs because it allows the stained-glass effect to work its magic, it's not too heavy to be supported by poles, and it allows the couple to use the chuppah as a warm quilt after the wedding.

Sun-dappled and showing a little snippet of the light center.

Read more...

A Chuppah in Progress

This is a tale about moving from there (above) to here (below).

And, before I proceed, I must reiterate my warning that my camera is dying a slow death and is not doing justice to the vibrant colors in the chuppah. The dull, somewhat 70s era shading stems from the combination of the crappy camera, indoor lighting, and flash (thanks rain!).

Starting to lay out the blocks, with the light and light/medium blocks in the center.

Surrounded by medium blocks,

and then by medium/dark and dark blocks.

However, the more I looked at, stared at, and contemplated the design, the more I realized something was off. It was unbalanced and didn't work. The problem, I determined, was the rectangular shape.

All along, I'd been thinking about a square; I decided it needed a square center, which would blossom into a big square. So I made more blocks (barely squeezing out the last dark blocks, hoping the fabric strips could eek out 2 more blocks). Which they did:

[See those striations, they are not in the quilt, they simply reinforce the ill camera.]

Here's a better shot, from a different angle:

I'm still a little concerned about posting these pictures, because they don't show off the quilt top well. Don't hold it against the chuppah. Here are some close-ups that, I think, give a better sense of what the colors look like.

Making this quilt reminded me that fabric surprises you. I included some fabrics I was unsure about in combination with others, fabrics that while making the blocks stood out to me, making me wonder if they really fit in. Then, when it was all put together, I barely noticed them. They blended in, my concerns unfounded.

The chuppah is not complete, but the pieced top is. The first time I saw this design, I thought it would make a lovely chuppah, and I'm glad I'm able to make it for a good friend. I don't, however, intend to make the design again anytime soon, for it is very labor intensive; chain-piecing helps, but strip-piecing is limited because variety is key in this design.

I've been calling this "Beth & Harley's chuppah."
Any suggestions for other, less literal and more evocative names?

Read more...

"You can borrow it"

The above picture reveals several things: I was at a wedding this weekend (not that the date or my presence is anywhere in the picture), my friend Annie got married, and my camera sucks. The sepia tone of the photo conveys the latter piece of information, as my camera's ability to render color seems to be in doubt, and the sepia filter was the only thing that turned the image into something other than a photo with color saturation from 1970 (which is fine if intentional but that was not my intention).

In any event, Annie and Daniel, the now-wedded couple, are extremely generous people who also pay close attention to the world around them. Many aspects of their wedding reflected their awareness of the world in which we live, including vegetarian food (for which I am eternally grateful as veg good at non-vegetarian weddings, especially kosher meat ones, is often lackluster at best), local flowers purchased at a farmer's market and arranged by their friends in recycled glass bottles collected by them and their families, and kippot made by Mayaworks (a non-profit supporting the work of Guatemalan artisans).

I loved the trail of color created by the kippot leading up to their chuppah, which Annie made. I went with her on one of her fabric-finding expeditions. And one of the wonderful things about her is that she lives in the moment, finds fabric she likes, and then makes it all work the way she wants it to work. She appliqued the fabric to canvas to create the image of mountains on their chuppah which is similar to that on their invitation, which she watercolored. Unfortunately I didn't get a close-up, but it has green mountains, blue skies, a bright yellow sun, and a multi-colored and multi-patterned border.

Their ketubah also reflects their mutual love of the outdoors. And the neat leaves, which are all different from one another (though that may be hard to see in the above picture) provide the inspiration for the gift I'm making them. That gift exists only in my head right now, but they (and you) will see it one day, hopefully sooner rather than later.

It may not be clear from the pictures I've shown, but Annie loves green. And thus green will comprise a large color element of said gift.

As those who know me in real life know, I am not a frilly clothes person. I like simple. Hence I really liked Annie's dress which is, lace-covering-the-shoulders-for-the-ceremony-notwithstanding, one of the simpler and less-"wedding-y" dresses I have seen. Also, I like sandals and Annie wore flat sandals with the dress. When I complimented Annie on her dress, which a local seamstress made for her, she said (as she's said so many times about other things), "you can borrow it." That pretty much sums things up, already offering to loan her wedding dress to someone else at her wedding. Pretty awesome.

* * *

And about that camera, I may be in the market for a new camera soon. Any tips/favorites/recommendations? I'll be looking for a decent point & shoot that I can use for fun and in the archives (the turn off the automatic flash button is therefore a necessity).

Read more...

Blog = Post-It Note?

I blog for many reasons, but occasionally I post something primarily as a reminder to myself. This is one of those moments.

Among the other projects I'll be working on in August is a chuppah for my friends' November wedding. The bride and groom requested that the chuppah echo/correspond to the ketubah design they've chose ("Love's Mosaic" by Robert Saslow, available here if you're looking). I've been working out the chuppah design and sketching out some color variations. I'm posting the ketubah image here so I can easily access it wherever I am (which these days is frequently not near my computer) and get a little done in the odd moments I have.


[Sneak-peeks of the chuppah will depend on how much the couple wants to see ahead of time, so no guarantees...]

Read more...

Tree of Life Chuppah

As I promised a couple days ago, I'm going to share a little more about last weekend's wedding in Boston. In the interest of keeping the posts to a somewhat reasonable length, I'm going to break them into two. For the crafty, craft-inspired, and craft-interested among you, I want to highlight Claire and Michael's beautiful chuppah (you may sometimes here "huppah" as the "ch" is a gutteral sound, not the hard "ch" of chomp) as well as their ketubah (wedding contract).

Claire's mom made the chuppah over the summer (I know there was a little anxiety last June about when it would be finished, but it was complete and gorgeous by the wedding). The chuppah, or wedding canopy under which the ceremony takes place, symbolizes the Jewish home the couple will build together. Many people use a tallit, or prayer shawl, as the chuppah but it can be made of anything and therefore represents a fantastic opportunity to customize, personalize, and aestheticize the wedding.

The chuppah in action, resting on 4 poles carved by Claire's dad. The carving was impressive as each pole is actually 3 parts and yet that was invisible. The pictures do not do the poles justice.

The chuppah up-close and personal:

The blue and green borders -- the flower embroidery on the green area matches the flower embroidery on Claire's dress!

The central image, a tree of life surrounded by 4 pairs of birds.

The ketubah presents another opportunity for customizing the wedding ceremony, both artistically and philosophically. To say that traditional ketubbot are not the most egalitarian documents out there is an understatement, though some will acknowledge this point while emphasizing its language was designed to protect women in ancient times. But I digress. Today, many couples choose to alter the traditional language (this is, after all, the contract that defines the terms of the marriage), either through somewhat standard forms or individually.

In this case, Claire wrote their ketubah to reflect the mutual commitments she and Michael were making to one another. Designed by friend and Cambridge artist, Josh Meyer, their ketubah is beautifully written, designed, and calligraphed:

Printed on what I think is handmade leaf paper, the contract (literally) flanks the central text, Song of Songs 2:10-12:

"My beloved spoke thus to me
'Arise, my darling;
My fair one, come away!
For now the winter is past,
The rains are over and gone.
The blossoms have appeared in the land.'" (JPS translation)

Read more...

A Wonderful Weekend

I just got back from Boston, from Claire and Michael's wedding weekend. It was wonderful, and I will post a few things about it in the next few days.

Some of the weekend highlights include:
*Getting to hang out with Claire on Friday, including some relaxed chatting amidst pedicures, an amazing lunch at Henrietta's Table, and some last-minutes errands around Harvard Square where Sarah and I marveled over a fun 40s-esque black felted hat that neither us had reason to ever wear.

*Unrelated to the wedding, but tied to being in Boston: I ran into (or rather he saw me and called my name several times before I figured out what was happening) one of my former advisees who is now at Harvard Medical School (I have nothing to do with this; he was brilliant without my advice). Unexpected run-ins are so gratifying.

*The best Kabbalat Shabbat I have been at in a while. The room was packed, voices were loud and clear, emotions were high (in a good way!), the group turned the end of Lecha Dodi into 10-15 minutes of dancing around Claire and Michael. It was amazing, one of the few truly spiritual moments I have felt in many years. The last great Kabbalat Shabbat I can recall took place in my living room in CA -- one of the various times the minyan met at my house, and I was sitting on the stairwell as there was no other space, and looked around with some awe about what we had created. And this is quite relevant to the wedding as I'm sure Claire, Torie, Sivan, and Igor were all there that night and we all celebrated together this weekend.

More on the actual wedding to come. As a sneak peek, here is a close-up of the beautiful chuppah that Claire's mom made for the wedding (using applique and embroidery):

Read more...

Full Frontal

Into what gutter has your mind fallen? A couple more pictures of the lego chuppah for Jen and Claire, including the full frontal one.

photo credit: Todd Manchester; photo supplier: Torie Gorges

Read more...

joy, happiness, love, companionship, peace, and friendship

Sunday brought forth the beautiful wedding of Jen and Claire, which means that I can offer pictures of the full "lego chuppah" to those of you who have been waiting patiently at home.

Before I left for the wedding, I folded and wrapped the chuppah as best one can when the chuppah may be examined by TSA officials curious about anything and everything in carry-on luggage.

All ribboned-up and double-wrapped in plastic bags, I was off for the land of sunshine (California).

A few more teaser shots:
















As you can (sort-of) see, each of the 4 curves was created with an assortment of rectangles and squares in green, blue, and purple fabrics. In binding the edges of the chuppah, I sewed strips of different fabrics together so that the final edge consists of multiple fabrics and colors (best seen in the right-hand picture above). For more pictures of the chuppah up-close and in-process, see below.

So what does the chuppah look like?

From the top (above) and from underneath (below)

Although the chuppah is predominantly white, you can still get a sense of the pattern from below: a white-on-white "snails trails" pattern spirals outward from the center in an intertwined fashion and the lego pieces curve along the borders (best seen along the top and left in the picture above). A friend took pictures of the chuppah when as several people held it up, and I'll add those images as soon as I get them.

Most importantly, here is the chuppah in use during the ceremony.

In the background, as Claire and Jen circle one another before entering the home that the chuppah represents.

Claire and Jen under the chuppah.

As part of their Brit Ahuvim v'Shutafut (Lovers' Covenant and Partnership), Jen and Claire exchanged items of value -- in their case, necklaces made from each of their great-grandmothers' engagement rings -- that symbolize the partnership they enter together, on equal ground. One of the reasons their ceremony was so lovely was because they attended to all details of the ritual; they studied and interrogated tradition in order to design and enact a ceremony that reflected their deep ties to Judaism as well as their insistence that Jewish tradition is inclusive of everyone.

[Sidenote: The tradition of Brit Ahuvim stems from the desire to move the wedding ceremony from a ritual of acquisition (the kinyan, or purchase, that occurs in a ketubah, Jewish marriage contract) to a ritual of mutual partnership. Initially created by Rachel Adler, the ceremony and language of the covenant derive from Talmudic partnership law. For more information, see Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (1998).]

Sweet comment from a wedding guest: "Where do you sell your work?" For now, the answer is (courtesy a wise friend), I take commissions. But, like anything else, that too could change.

Read more...

Lego Chuppah, Part II

Today pictures are uploading, so I'll try again...my friends Jen and Claire created the above image as their vision for their chuppah and left it to me to translate it into a quilt.

After printing a copy of the design, I first traced it onto graph paper so I could figure out proportions and begin to think through how to cut and sew the fabric.


I took the picture above when I was in the middle of sewing. The writing beneath the image charts the size of each "lego piece" and the blue indicates sections I had already sewn. I broke the lego chain into smaller units in order to figure out how to piece it together. A more experienced quilter would probably have been able to figure out how to strip piece some of the blocks, but I stuck with the tried, true, and longer method of cutting out individual pieces and chain sewing them together.











I purposefully worked on the lego sections, which effectively serve as borders, first because I knew they would be more complicated and take more time than the middle. I made a few errors along the way, sewing pieces together incorrectly, but nothing was unfixable.















I ended up with 4 sections about 50 inches long, which was perfect for a chuppah that I wanted to be around 60 inches by 60 inches. (Again, more experienced folks would be able to ensure that their end quilt was precisely the size they intended it to be. In my case, being within a couple inches on a quilt pattern I've never made before, seems perfectly acceptable to me.)

When Jen, Claire, and I talked, they noted that while their design used an array of colors, they didn't want the chuppah to actually resemble the red, blue, green, and yellow legos of childhood fun. We agree that "cool" colors -- blues, purples, and greens -- would constitute the pieces, and I rummaged through my stash of fabric to find a wide variety of patterns to use. There are some fabrics that I only used once and others that I used multiple times. Given that most pieces were between 1x1.5 and 2.5x2.5, I would have felt I was wasting fabric if I had only cut one piece from most of them.

The middle of the quilt, per the design, is all white. In order to ensure the quilt would hang together and look like more than a white sheet with some fancy borders, I used 2 different white-on-white fabrics for the center snail's trail pattern. The center is one huge snail's trail block, which I like for this chuppah because it conveys the sense of intertwined lives. Here are some close-ups:
















I may or may not post full pictures of the chuppah before the wedding -- it will depend on whether Jen and Claire want to see it ahead of time or not. But rest assured, I will post pictures of the chuppah in its entirety as well as it being used.

Edited to add: see pictures of the entire chuppah here and here.

Read more...