Tanach Book Cover

At the local Associated Hebrew School, there is a ceremony in third grade, coinciding with Shavuot, when the kids receive their bibles. It is a tradition for the parents/family to decorate a fabric book cover. At Jeremy's pre-bar mitzvah Shabbat dinner, his aunt Susan (my sil's sil) mentioned that she had to do the cover, had missed the school's how-to suggeston session and didn't know where to start. I offered to help asking only that she give me some idea of what her son, Mitchell, wanted. Mitchell wanted two images: Noah's ark and Mose's tablets on Mount Sinai.
Susan and her daughter, Julia, came over a few weekends ago and we started with Noah's ark based on an image from the internet. The ark had no animals which is a good thing -- I'm not THAT good at representational... It was an image of an ark on water but with a rainbow in the background. I explained to them about fusibles. They chose the fabric combinations from my stash and then we cut and fused and did a little stitching to hold the design together. It was not yet attached to the cover.
This past weekend, Susan returned with Mitchell to work on the second image. This one was almost totally Mitchell's design of Mount Sinai. He chose the fabrics, we ironed fusible onto them, he drew the elements onto the back of fusible, and Susan cut them out. We made the tablets by printing the Hebrew letters onto freezer-backed fabric run through the laser printer and heat set them by ironing. Once Mitchell had arranged the composition on the book cover background, I fused it down and added some stitching to hold it. Same goes for Noah's ark, to which we added a dove with the branch in its beak.
I had a thoroughly enjoyable time sharing my stitching know how. While I may have experienced some discomfort from letting go the reins, any imperfections perceived by me were overridden by the happy look on Susan and Mitchell's faces. (Susan also brought me a lovely gift which I will used at the Seder).

At the FAT meeting, Christine's challenge piece for "spring" was an image of coils, done in a holographic style. I am quite taken with the idea and may try to duplicate it. My great grandmother's Shabbat candelsticks come to mind.