Ella's tallit bag - completed

This is Ella's bat mitzvah gift from my family. The bag to hold her tallit. It's made out of a piece of fabric that my friend Welmoed had used both as an elegant curtain for a competition at a drapery convention and the dress she made to go with it. It is a really heavy crushed velvet. This is also the most expensive fabric I have ever sewed. It is a German home dec fabric that apparently retails for $250 a yard. Welmoed gave me some of the left overs from her really impressive drapery vignette as a house gift a few years ago. She said that she figured I would put it to good use. I have. Given that this tallit bag will get lots of use, I'm glad I had this really sturdy fabric for the bag.

I added the couched ribbon as well as a nice celestial sprinkling of sequins and beads. The bag refers to God's blessing of making one's descendants as many as the stars in the heavens. The bag is lined in a blue rayon faille. I constructed it like a simple envelope bag after binding all of the edges with bronze metallic middy braid from the giant spool I had purchased several years back. I bought that big spool because I knew I would use that ribbon often. If you pay attention to my work at all, I'm sure you recognize it. The bag is large enough to hold Ella's t'fillin bag as well.

I can't wait to show it to Ella.