Further Progress on Rosie’s tallit

As I wrote earlier, this tallit is a collaboration between Rosie and me. She did the silk painting. Around the time that rosie completed her part of her tallit, her mother’s red tallit arrived.  her lovely painting looked a little simple and bleak against the expanse of white.

the desert side before

I understood Rosie’s panic, but I also knew that her tallit was far from finished. the dead white of the silk did make her lovely paintings look a bit bleak.  With Rosie’s permission I added a sky blue between  her two painted panels. Rosie also loved the stenciled stripes on her mom’s tallit. So I added a stenciled stripe but not on a red, but on the light blue grey.  it worked with both the lush tree side and the desert side of the tallit.

We decided that we would line the tallit with the night sky. I usually paint thin layers of dye, allow them to dry and then add more layers of dye. it has been really muggy here in new york. the silk that usually dries in a few hours remained damp for days. that really slowed progress.  I added subtle stars to the lining.

I stitched the tallit to the lining. I then had to  think about how to do the top stitching. I realized that it might be a nice touch to relate Rosie’s tallit to her mother’s. I used the same magenta embroidery thread, in a stitch that I had used on her mother’s tallit. it’s subtle. this isn’t quite the same as mother –daughter dresses, but rather something that’s nice to notice once it is pointed out to you. I love how the magenta pops.


I still need to do the corner pieces. But I do like how it has come together.