Sometimes the product is so much fun to make, so filled with joy, that it seems like absolutely no effort is required. It helps to have a good eye, a way with the materials, and an ease with the construction, all turning toward the perfect Silk Denim Tote to gift friends of the Bat Mitzvah.
In the Babylonian Talmud it is written that “when we enter Av, our joy is diminished.” This month is associated with the darkest events in Jewish history, the Nine Days culminating in the fast day of Tisha B’Av, the ninth of Av.
However, Tu B’Av, the 15th Day of Av, is a post-biblical day of joy. It served as a matchmaking day for unmarried women in the Second Temple period, before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. In its modern incarnation, it is a Hebrew-Jewish Day of Love, slightly resembling Valentine’s Day in English-speaking countries. Tu B’Av, is a day for romance explored through singing, dancing, & giving flowers, and a great day for weddings, commitment ceremonies, and the renewal of vows.
Next Tu B’Av, the 15th of Av, 5784, will be the opening of “Louise Silk: A Patchwork Life” at the Senator John Heinz History Center. The exhibit is a retrospective presenting the full scope of my career from 1972 until the present, placing the work within a historic and biographical context. It will consider the role of quilting in the lives of American women broadly, and it will analyze the reasons that Jewish women immigrating from Europe to America rarely participated in quilting. It will also tell the story of Western Pennsylvania fiber arts over the past half century, a period when the field expanded beyond its roots as a home-based craft to become increasingly accepted within the fine art world.
Quilts and other works of fiber arts will be supplemented and enriched by archival materials including family photographs, preparatory sketches and planning documents, archival film and video, and a viewer engagement installation, all pieced together to demonstrate the importance of American needlework as the repository of folk history, cultural reflection, personal empathy, and living history.
BASHERT; SYNCHRONICITY; RIGHT ACTION; KARMA; call it what you may, Tu B’Av is nothing less than the most perfect date to open “Louise Silk: A Patchwork Life”, giving the added purpose of spreading love and joy throughout the region.
The quilt shown above was my first try at the 72 to Names.
“And the angel of G‑d who had been going ahead of the camp of Israel now moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud went from in front of them and stood behind them. Thus [the pillar of cloud] came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel, making it cloud and darkness [to the Egyptians], but it gave light by night [to the Jews], so that the one came not near the other all the night. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and G‑d drove the sea back with a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land; thus the waters were divided.” (Ex. 14:14)
The 72 Names comes from these three lines of Torah when Moses and the Israelites need the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea. It is a formula of 72 combinations of 3 Hebrew letters each formed from a recombination or the 3 sentences.
Each three letter combination is an angelic energetic entity. They are not words or number combinations and cannot be pronounced; just felt & understood. Take together, capable of parting a sea and saving a nation.
I couldn’t be more proud of us. As I reported in the last blog, the last 2 weeks of April, my family and I walked over 70 miles from Valenca, Portugal to Santiago, Spain. It was a glorious mix of urban & rural environments, a comfortable selection of accommodations & sustenance, and a fascinating glimpse of the vastness of human nature- all in one little walk.
It’s hard to understand until you do it yourself, but I picked the above picture, to give you a glimpse of the trail. All you have to do is watch for the Camino Markers. Some times there is a choice and then you look to the locals or the others on the trail for guidance. People are incredibly helpful and friendly. There are lots of places to stop for a bathroom and/or a coffee, so a typical day contains of 3 or 4 segments of 3 to 5 mile walks with rest stops in-between. The group tries to stay close, but also to respect each others pace and so there is a constant shifting of relationships to accommodate each person’s needs.
Because I did this once before, I took it upon myself to organize all of the accommodations and the luggage transfer. Everything about this worked out. Porto is a beautiful city to both start and end. If you have the time you can walk from there, but we did not-and for us, starting at Valenca, an old fortress town was magical.
I can’t say enough about the value of the experience. Character building in real time and experience. BUEN CAMINO!!!
The PORTUGUESE CAMINO- from Porto to Santiago
In 2019, three of us walked the El Camino, going from France to Santiago.
Today, back by popular demand, eight of us, leave to experience The Way’s second most popular path, beginning from the south in Portugal and walking north to Santiago. Having done it once with the help of a tour company; I stepped forward to make all of the arrangements independently. Time will tell!?!?!? See you in two weeks!
¡Buen Camino!
A year plus ago, I made the commitment to a 10 Year plan which helped me to zero in on the need to have a one person show- as a kind of summation of My Patchwork Life. This, my seventh one person exhibition, including fourteen quilts following its chapters, will occur in the fall of 2024 right here on the Southside at the BrewHouse. The exhibition, entitled DAYNEU. is taken from the Hebrew word meaning IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH.
The first quilt in this series is about A. TRUTH and based on quilts with circles. In Zen practice the circle, ensō, Ensō (円相) is a universal expression of wholeness, our true and innermost self in a myriad of things from reality to enlightenment.
Creating circles in patchwork is particularly challenging. Making clothing, I learned to set-in sleeves. In my early days of piecing, I applied these sewing principles to traditional drunkard paths and double wedding rings. Working with tee shirts, I got the innovative idea to take advantage of the stretch of the fabric to create free-form circles without patterns. This became the key technique to create many of my angels.
To start the quilt, my biggest problem was what materials to use. Go to my favorite online quilt shop? Half price day at the Salvation Army or The Goodwill bins? Then it hit me to go to my closet and voila- a perfect palette of greens and browns.
Zen Circles is composed of: Zen Center Robe, April Cornell Dress, EB Pepper Shirt, Fancy Tee, CP Shades Pants, J Jill Jacket, Panache tops and pants, Hemp Jacket, CP Shades Embroidery Jacket, MaryAnn’s Batiks, Heath’s custom Indian shirt, Naomi’s Bubbe Bed Sheet, Extra saved pieces of J Jill and CP Shades Tops, Sadye’s linen napkins.
As I make these DAYNEU Quilts, I determined that after the main quilt is completed, I will use up the leftovers-a kind of completion of the project. For this one, I settled on a traditional quilt pattern that I always loved because it looks like circles in the way it is pieced, even though the seams are straight.
Since 2013 Sarah and I have been collaborating as SILKDENIM on the production of recycled Denim. Today, most of our sales come through our ETSY STORE when one our original and best selling products is OUR BIG BAG. Here is the info from our store:
Originally inspired by the idea of making the reusable grocery bag cool and versatile, the Big Bag is more enduring and has endless uses. It can function as a grocery bag, an overnight bag, an athletic bag, an audition bag, a carry-all-day bag … and it really is big.
Made from 100% recycled denim in Pittsburgh upon order. Each bag includes a pocket, and it might even include two. All items are one-of-a-kind, unique, and vary. The photos shown here are just examples.
Because all SilkDenim items are handmade to order, we can personalize them by making them from your own recycled clothing or materials, take color requests, or add hand-embroidery or patches. Contact us for special requests.
Email us if you would like to buy a bundle of big bags for a discount
17”H X 14”W X 7”D; 13” hang from shoulder
About SilkDenim:
Louise and Sarah Silk are a mother-daughter duo making Art-You-Can-Use as a response to unsustainable ‘fast fashion’. They deconstruct worn clothing and re-fashion the fiber into one-of-a-kind garments, bags, quilts, and home goods. They do it all by hand themselves in their Pittsburgh, PA studio. Through this process, they not only save the environment of excess material, but they also celebrate the beauty and authentic details of worn fabric. Inspired by the rust belt’s history and Louise Silk’s long time practice of making memory quilts, they transform discarded fiber into objects of value, practical use, beauty, and meaning.
I have been using the bag since we began, and I can report that every clerk who comments on the bag and says, “I should make one of those!”. So for all of you who want to make one, I have put instructions on my UTUBE CHANNEL.
This is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fdoEh4LIyM&t=5s and this is the the QR code to get you there with your phone:
Let me know how it goes!!
Memories of a lifetime with my daughter, Sarah, my granddaughters, Maya & Naomi.
We started in Nice, stopped in Eze and spent two nights in Monaco.
We rented a car in Monaco and drove through Provence.
We ended with a train and four days in Paris. Our favorites, hands down, were people watching, shopping, and eating!
Rachel Maddow is by far my favorite news analyst. I happily planned my evening around her regular 9:00 broadcast. And so with good reason, I have been quite sad and even a little lost that she has pulled back to work on other projects and will only be on air Monday evenings.
It created quite the crater in my life and then I heard a fabulous interview with Symone Sanders and wouldn’t you know, she is hosting a new show on MSNBC. at the end of the interview she gave women three pieces of advice: 1 Ask for the things that you want and have worked for- people might tell you no- but you will be pleasantly surprised to sometimes get to yes. 2. Do the work, read, research, execute- you must be able to perform and back up what you say. 3. Be your authentic self. You are okay exactly as you are and it is the world’s responsibility to accommodate to you.
I was so excited to hear Symone, I looked her up and saw the title of her latest book: No, You Shut Up: Speaking Truth to Power and Reclaiming America. What a title!!! It seems like I could have found a Rachel replacement!!
some thoughts from Charlotte Joko Beck
Now one of the illusions we may have about our practice is that practice will make things more comfortable, clearer, easier, more peaceful, and so on. Nothing could be further from the truth.
All of us feel we are separate from life; we feel as if we have a wall around us. As long as we feel separate from life, we feel the wall…..We may be anxious, we may have disturbing thoughts, but our wall keeps us unaware of that.
Pandora’s box is all of our self-centered activities and the corresponding emotions that they create. Opening Pandora’s box is breaking down the wall. So Pandora’s box, that which upsets and disturbs us, is the emergence of that which we have not been aware of before: our anger toward life. It has to boil our sooner or later. This is our ego, that life is not the way we want it to be. It is our fury when the people or events in our lives simply don’t give us what we demand.
As our practice becomes more sophisticated we begin to sense our tremendous deficiencies, our tremendous cruelty. We see the things we hate and the things we just can’t stand. There is grief in that.
As we get more sensitive to our life and what it truly is, we can’t run from it. So I want you to appreciate your practice and your life. That’s all this is about. Nothing fancy. Zen is action itself.
BubbeWisdom