Further adventures of the "Old Shul " tallit

Most tallitot have stripes. Most of those stripes fall into one of several possible stripe patterns. You can see some examples that I had sketched out to give Elisa some ideas of the possibilities.

I had already stencilled out the wide stripes, using a commercial architectural stencil. I needed to also do a couple of narrower stripes to work with the wide stencil.

Today, at services my friend Jerry showed me the Megilla that had been illuminated as a gift for him by calligrapher Jay Greenspan. All of the decorative elements in the Megilla scroll were taken from our beautiful synagogue http://www.anschechesed.org/ and reproduced in miniature form. Here was the fabulous Moorish style stencils added to the bimah in the 1940's. There were the images from the stained glass windows in our beautiful chapel.

When I got home I realized that I could create a smaller version of the lovely Florentine stencil I had used for the wider stripes. I then stencilled the narrower stripes with this simplified version of the commercial stencil.

Now you can see both the commercial stencil and my own simplified take on it. Now, on setting the colors and piecing the tallit.