Sunday, January 4, 2015

Striving to Dehoard Extra Challah Covers

I rarely sell my premade quilts - most of my sales are commissions - but a few weeks ago a cyberfriend asked if I have any challah (Sabbath bread) covers available for quick purchase, which forced me to do something I've long feared: Go through my stack of quilted challah covers, figure out the ones I would be willing to sell,

 It's so hard - I get attached. So I made myself come up with a pile of 10, and photographed each one for her. Your job: Guess which one she bought. (I don't expect you to buy one. Really, I know you can make your own.) First:
The leaves are cut from a seperate fabric and appliqued to the dark blue background. It took many, many hours.

The next two were early prototypes for my Log Cabin challah cover pattern: Hand beaded with large purple and gold beads, hand painted (the lettering) Heavily quilted. 16.75" x 16.75". The words are the blessing over the challah.
 The words are outline quilted and painted with gold metallic paint. The challot are echo quilted.

Next one is made from the same pattern. Tiny seed beads, gold and holographic purple, embellish the challot.  (Purple for regular raisins, gold for golden raisin). It's 18" x 18".
The letters are outline stitched with a variegated purple/turquoise thread, then filled in with gold metallic thread. This is NOT done with an embroidery machine - I don't have one - it's all hand-guided, and boy did it take a lot of time to do neatly. I think this was the last time I ever did that.
This next one is more of a mat than a challah cover. 20" x 15"

Quilted with emanating holographic and variegated threads.


This  next one is stencilled - "Who brings forth bread from the earth," in Hebrew and English. It was made while developing my Whole Wheat Challah Cover pattern (scroll down a bit on the page). Background is hand painted, with sun-sensitive paints; then exposed to sun created the dark areas on the front. Heavily quilted. Multicolored yarn trim. 22" x 24".

 Here's the same stencil, but the central wheat is not done in reverse. It's heavily hand-embellished with embroidery stitches and French knots.The background is hand-painted. It's 21.5" x 18". There's une boo boo with the paint in the upper left corner, tragically. 

 Very simple - Shabbat on one side...

Chanukah on the other, 19" x 17" plus 1.5" fringe all the way around.
This is a small mat, probably works better going under a wine cup than over a challah. It's 13" in diameter.  It's heavily quilted and hand embellished with unusual buttons and green lace.

Very traditional. Pieced star, extensively quilted with holographic and gold threads, with the words "Shabbat v'yom Tov" (Shabbat and Holidays) quilted into the white side strips. 20.5" x 14" .



Next, a harvest challah cover, using the same wheat stencils shown above. It's hand painted, stamped, and stencilled,
...and very heavily quilted. The colors are muted, more like the above photo than below. 18" x 15 1/2" plus 2" beaded trim all the way around. 

Can you guess which one she bought? I bet you can. She immediately bought the first one, traditional and elaborate. I had to fold up all the rest and put them back in their boxes. That was a bit of a bummer, after I'd already mentally said goodbye.

Do you have a favorite way of selling your overstock? 

2 comments:

  1. Love, Love, Love your star of David cover. the first one you show here.
    Joan

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for commenting!