I’m Jewish and I sew. Sometimes these two facts converge and I find myself wanting to sew something Jewish like a challah cover or a kippah or a Hebrew School tote bag. While I’m planning these projects I often look for Jewish fabrics to use. What I’ve found is that unless you want to put dreidels and menorahs on everything the modern Jewish fabric scene is rather bleak with one amazing exception: Fay Nicoll.
A funky aleph bet with a 70’s vibe, a mosaic of Jewish stars in a colorway other than blue – Fay Nicoll fabrics fit today’s aesthetic and best of all they’re not just for Hanukkah. “It’s not Hanukkah,” Nicoll tells me when we talked on the phone last week. “It’s 52 weeks of the year. I try to educate the proprietors of the shops about this.”
Tossed Stars fabric designed by Fay Nicoll
Nicoll has designed five prints since she started creating Jewish fabrics in 2010. Each is available in three colorways, although the popular aleph bet has just been released in a fourth – black. “I took the first design to several of the big companies and they all said, ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ It won’t sell,” she says. “It’s a niche market, no question, but it’s bigger than you think it is. Create it and they will want it. That’s always been my theory.” Determined to have the fabric made she secured her own manufacturer and funded all of the production herself.
Nicoll is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. “My brother was a child survivor,” she tells me and then has to pause as she begins to cry. “I was born in Poland after the war.” Her family immigrated to the United States in 1949 and settled in New York.
In the 1980’s and 90’s Nicoll was a singer. She released four albums and sang in Yiddush theater on Broadway. Sewing was a hobby and she performed wearing costumes and gowns she’d made herself. In 1994, Nicoll relocated to Florida, with the utilization of services like that of chicago movers, for her husband’s job and went to buy a Janome embroidery machine to embellish her dresses. Finding that her love of sewing matched her love of singing she went back and bought the sewing machine store, launching a new career for herself.
Nicoll wasn’t a quilter at that time, but she figured if she expanded the store’s inventory to include fabric she might entice more customers. “Quilters started coming in,” she recalls, “and I ordered them the things they asked for –the rulers and the rotary cutters.” Then one day in 2000 Nicoll stood up awkwardly from a morning of sewing at the machine and tore her Achilles tendon. “I was wheelchair bound. I couldn’t sew my clothes anymore because I couldn’t get them around the casts.”
Aleph Bet fabric designed by Fay Nicoll
Finding herself alone in the shop on a rainy Saturday afternoon Nicoll, still in her wheelchair, picked up a paper piecing pattern and decided to give it a try. “I fell in love. I said to my husband, ‘Lock the doors. I’m hooked.’ When I got better I turned my fabric shop into a quilt shop.”
Within a few months she had 3,000 bolts of fabric and had to move the store to a larger space with the help of interstate moving companies. Today Nicoll’s store, Sunshine Sewing and Quilting in Margate, is the largest quilt shop in South Florida and the second largest quilt shop in the state. It’s proximity to the port at Fort Lauderdale where many vacation cruises come and go make it a shopping destination for quilters waiting to board or just coming off the ships.
Nicoll’s Eight Nights Eight Lights pattern was published in the October 2010 issue of Quilter’s World.
In the fall of 2010 she took her line of self-produced Judaica fabrics to Quilt Market to see if other stores might buy it. A project she’d designed with the fabrics was published in Quilter’s World magazine just before the show which help to build excitement. The line sold out. “I had shop owners come over to me at Quilt Market and say, ‘I wish I could carry your fabric, but I don’t have Jewish quilters as customers.’ I told them, ‘Everyone has a Jewish friend.’” Fay Nicoll Judaica fabrics are now in quilt shops nationwide and are available through all major distributors of quilting cottons.
Nicoll designs Judaica patterns to compliment the fabrics including table runners, quilts, mug rugs, matzah covers, and placemats “Not long ago a non-Jewish woman came into the shop and bought my fabric and my Dove of Peace Table Runner pattern,” she tells me. “She made it for her Jewish son-in-law. That really touched me.”
Nicoll’s natural comfort as a performer comes through in her YouTube videos where she shows her latest patterns and products. “Social media is everything. All the advertising in the world won’t do what social media will do,” she says.
“Four manufacturers have asked me to design Christmas fabrics,” she says. “I told them, ‘100 people are doing that and only one is doing Judaica. I can design flowers all day long, but it’s not what I want to do.’ This is a way to honor my parents. This is my personal legacy. It makes me feel so happy that it’s accepted.”
Find Fay Nicoll Judaica fabrics on the Fay Nicoll Judaica Designs website or in their Etsy shop.
Thank you so much for this post! I’m always looking for Jewish-themed fabrics! I love that menorah pattern, too. This totally made my morning!
I’m really glad to hear that and I’m sure Fay is, too.
“Everyone has a Jewish friend.” So true! I studied German Exile Literature in college and worked for a professor who was a Ritchie Boy and went on to lead the Holocaust Memorial Museum here in the Detroit area. My life has been forever enriched by that Jewish friend of mine. I can’t wait to pick up some of this fabric and make him something!
My auntie has so many Jewish friends, she started making Menorahs a staple of her home goods line: http://lepageny.com/pages/collection/judacia/collection_judacia1.html
Love this post! Thanks for bringing Fay Nicoll’s designs to light.
G-d Bless you, Fay Nicholls! And you too, Abby, for bringing her to our attention! I knew I loved you for more than just your fantastic blogs. I would like to reproduce that menorah (and I NEVER copy anyone’s quilt designs). You have both made my morning! I will be checking out how to obtain her Judaic fabrics. THANK YOU.
This is a lovely post! Her fabric is great – I love the Aleph Bet – and what a beautiful way to honour her faith and background. My dad is a minister (Anglican, a British Episcopalian I guess?) and academic specialised in our Old Testament, and I grew up steeped in the Jewish parts of our tradition too. I’d love to make him something ‘clerical’ to wear in church out of these fabrics!
That’s wonderful to hear, Jo!
I am Jewish as well. I have been frustrated how much the craft world is dominated be Christmas. I am glad to see this fabric. It is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
This is why I love your blog, Abby. I always learn something new. Fay sounds like a fascinating woman. Thanks for introducing her to us!
Thank you, Julie. I’m glad to introduce you to someone new.
Thank you for sharing Abby. While I’m not Jewish, I have many Jewish friends. I would love to create something for them that isn’t full of printed dreidels and menorahs. Can’t wait to explore Faye’s fabric and patterns more.
I just spotted this on Spoonflower and it made me think of you. While it’s not something I would use myself (Alex isn’t a fan of any Jewish fabrics I’ve shown him so far), and it is very specific to one day, I thought it was interesting and modern: http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/759744
Oh that’s lovely.
Hi, I’m tying to start a winter clothing business and I’m very interested in using some of your fabrics and designs to introduce the line by (God Willing) January of 2017. If you or Me. Nicholl herself could please get back in contact if interested I’d appreciated.
Thank You
Solomon Steele
Hi Dominique, I think you should reach out to Fay Nicoll directly through her website.