Finishing off Danielle’s Chuppah

required more basting than I have ever done in my life.  because I had embroidered the lettering on the same side as the embroidered letters, I had to flip the middle of the chuppah over. That’s easy to say, but much more complicated to do.

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First I tea dyed one of the lovely tablecloths that came to me by way of Vivian.  I made some really strong tea, added it to hot water and then let the table cloth sit in the tea for about 20 minutes. I dried the cloth in the dryer.

 

The color was perfect. Here you see the cloth  that Danielle's great, great aunt embroidered over the tea dyed cloth from Vivian's grandmother.

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After basting the two cloths together, I cut out the center of the cloth and sewed all of the raw edges. then I flipped the sandwiched cloths, hand basted two two together and then inset pieced from the tea-dyed cloth where things didn’t quite line up. I machine stitched all of the raw seams with a three stepped zig-zag.  Yes, it was a whole lot of work.

 

As I worked I thought about my collection of linens from Vivian. so much of it is pieced and mended, sort of Franken-linen.  As I worked, I felt like I was very much in the tradition of women who took good care of their linens.

danielle's chuppah (2)

 

I then sewed on the tallit.  the result was a little horrifyingly beige.

I realized that it was nearly impossible to read the text on the tallit.  Danielle and I had talked about creating some sort of a medallion for the center of the chuppah.

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I wrote out the texts in a spiral with gold acrylic paint.  ( later on I bordered the medallion with a blue ribbon)

I also added gold to the center of the letters.

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Much less of an ocean of beige. yes I did press and starch the cloth before I delivered it to Danielle.

 

This is the bag I made for the chuppah.

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I brought the chuppah to Danielle. She was very happy.

 

I was delighted to be done. I wanted to do something lovely to reward myself.  I ended up watching a wonderful lecture in Hebrew on YouTube on German Jewish liturgical music.  It felt completely rewarding.

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