Passover Pillowcase

In getting ready for Passover, I pulled this pillowcase out of the linen closet. During the Passover seder, it's a tradition to sit on a cushion because when we were slaves that was something we could not do. Much of the sedar is created to raise questions that allow the story of the Exodus to be told. I decided my pillow should have a cover with a Passover theme.

This image was transferred from paper to a pillowcase by Original Works. They created a Purim pillowcase for me, too.

The image was a painting/print first. Only today, did I notice that the subtle vertical watercolored stripes in the background also look like matzoh ridges as if to say that the story of matzoh/affliction is all around us. It's the fabric of our lives. What we make of that "fabric" is our choice.

The orange matzoh balls were stamped onto the paper with sponges cut into circles. The matzoh was a stamp, too. I cut a square from a styrofoam tray and created the lines with a pounce wheel that belonged to my father.

My Father's Pounce Wheel
This was my father's pounce wheel. I googled the name on the wheel handle and discovered that it's a Grifhold No.10 Pounce Wheel.

Before he became a photographer, my father tried a number of professions. This pounce wheel was a remnant of his foray into the world of textile cutting. Neither of my brothers heard any stories about my father working in textiles. One thing no one will contest is that my father worked for his father who was a furrier.

I tried to find something definitive about how to use a pounce wheel. No luck. On the Internet, I learned that it can be used on a variety of craft projects to mark curves on uneven surfaces. This is what I remember from somewhere: run the pounce wheel along the paper pattern's seam lines to create perforations; place the paper over your fabric; pounce it with a chalk powder to create markings; sew along the pounce lines. Perhaps it's my adaptation of what I saw in the movie, The Agony and the Ecstasy, when Michaelangelo tranferred his drawings onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It seems to me that if you wanted to mark lines on leather or wood, you could use the pounce wheel with carbon paper or not as the tiny pin holes would be sufficient markings.