Psalm 104 tallit is completed!!!!

My friend Sharon, the serger expert , let me knowing her charming Mid-western way exactly what was going wrong with my serger and why. Thanks to her, I was able to complete the tallit with no more tears.

Like so much of my work, as I am actually working, I see the tallit in a completely myopic way. Once it was actually put together, I put it on and thought, " Hey!! what a cool piece!!"

My client had mentioned wanting magenta in the tallit. As I would sift through fabrics looking for magenta silk a strip of hand dyed ribbon that I had used in a different piece kept appearing. I kept putting it back into the bag that it emerged from.

Yesterday My client and I had a discussion about having an atara or not. We had discussed the possibility of having a line from the Psalm on the atara. As the tallit came together, having the atara be filled with text seemed like over kill. The tallit was so bold, so strong and my client is a small woman. I was afraid that she would be drowning in something that would be too much for her small frame.

I decided to use the ribbon for the pinot, the corner pieces. Normally, I wouldn't use such a thin fabric. But the tallit was so thick, that having sturdy pinot would be problematic. Before I decided the issue of the atara, I did the eyelets and tied the tzitzit/ritual fringes.


I then realized that the hand dyed ribbon was the perfect atara. I backed it with both the sift interfacing that I used to back all of the pieced work and then with the same wool that makes up the bulk of the tallit. I used the lovely arrow stitch that came on my nifty new machine.

So now the tallit is on it's way to Long Island. I can't wait to hear from my client. I hope she is as happy as I am.