A quilt is a beautiful expression of creativity and cooperation. In bringing together a quilt, people join hands as well as squares of fabric. Making a Jewish community quilt involved quite a few hands: large hands, small hands, elderly hands — and even tiny, chubby ones.
Last year, scores of people participated in a unique quilting project by visiting a booth at the cultural fair and contributing their artistic skills to create the squares that have now become two quilts. The theme of the project is “Tie the Community Together.” The result of a year’s work will make its debut at this year’s “To Life! A Jewish Cultural Street Festival,” which takes place Sunday, Oct. 6 on California Avenue in Palo Alto.
Jan Weinman, along with Dorothy Stern, helped inspire, organize and carry out the project.
“I feel very fortunate to have been a part of this from its inception,” said Weinman, a resident of Cupertino. “For me, one of the best times was being at the fair itself and watching people work. One family stopped by the booth, and when Mom and the kids moved on, Dad stayed, working and working. He actually took two squares and put them together on a purple background, with a bright aqua-blue tree of life. It was so beautiful that I thought, ‘This is going to be the centerpiece!’
“The neat thing was that people had different skill levels. Everyone learned as we went along.”
Each quilt consists of 50 to 60 pieces, and each square is an original work of art.
The materials used in the quilt varied from silks to leather, Weinman said. “We offered stamps with Jewish themes, fabric pens and puff paint so people could draw freehand.”
One popular fabric design is a bright rainbow. “There are also Jewish stars, a Noah’s ark on the water and a white lace dove flying over the multicolored rainbow.”
“One Israeli girl about age 14 made a beautiful dove of peace with an olive branch. It was so lovely that I asked her to make another square, an Israeli flag. A boy of about 12 was there for over an hour working on a Mount Sinai square. He created a Torah and the sun saying, ‘As it is written the Torah has been promised to you.’ It was so lovely.”
Stern, a Mountain View resident who also designed this year’s fair logo, described how the quilts actually came together, once the many 4-by-6-inch-inch squares had been assembled.
“It was amazing,” she said. “We picked out the squares that everyone liked the best, and there were so many we decided to make two quilts. Ten or 12 women worked to assemble them. We laid out the squares and started moving them around, trying to balance the colors. I thought, ‘There’s no way we’re ever going to decide!’ It was like one of those little games where you keep moving and pushing squares around. It’s overwhelming.
“All of a sudden, there was silence! We had found the most beautiful pattern, and we all realized it at once. We said, ‘Yes! That’s it.’ Who expected 10 women to agree?”
Weinman concurs. “That experience was absolutely awesome. We could not get over whatever it was that went through all of us…It flowed so beautifully. And that was the purpose of this whole thing, to create community. That’s exactly what it did.”
The two sister quilts are similar but not identical. After the first meeting, quilt-makers bought the sashing fabric that goes between the squares. “We actually cut the sashing and began sewing. When we finished sewing, we put the three layers together and pinned it. I sewed the binding and at the last meeting we tied the quilts,” said Weinman.
The quilt-makers are not yet an official Pomegranate Guild, a formal organization that is part of a larger network dedicated to quilt-making in the Jewish tradition. Now that the quilts are complete, Weinman, Stern and the others involved hope to continue the quilt-making and invite participation from others interested in needlecraft. The quilts will be hanging at the fair, Weinman said. “After that, the plan is to have them displayed around the community for the next four years until the new JCC [in Palo Alto] is completed. And we hope they will have a permanent home there.
“People who participated were really drawn to making something for the community.”
Discussing the works, Weinman said, “They’re not ‘perfect’ quilts, but they’re even better in the spirit of creativity and cooperation they represent.”