Skip to main content






A big shawl tallit is seen on both the right and the wrong side of the fabric. This works just fine for a traditional woven tallit. The woven stripes can be seen both on the face and the reverse of the fabric.






When you work with a tallit that is sewn , or pieced, rather than woven this does not naturally occur. I find tallitot with what I think of as naked undersides to be rather distressing. Maybe it is an OCD thing, but they really bother me in a visceral way. Those tallitot just seem WRONG. I admit that according to halacha/Jewish law there is nothing wrong with a tallit that is blank on the underside. But to me it feels like something that ought not be done.






My neurosis on this matter has led to having to figure out how to construct tallitot that read as stripes on both sides, yet don't have nasty raw edges. Over the years I have come up with several solutions. I had once done a tallit where I hemmed each stripe before attaching it to the next stripe with a three step zigzag. That looked lovely but it created problems with the drape of the tallit. Those thick layers of hem were not an ideal solution.






More often I applique the fancy part of the stripe on one side and use a contrasting thread in the bobbin so there is some striping on the underside. I may applique ribbons or strips of fabric to the underside.






In putting together the "Old Shul Tallit" I decided not to applique the stripes, but to piece them to keep down the weight of the tallit. The face of the tallit has the stencilled wine colored shantung.






I serged the stripes and the natural colored Tussah. The stitching was all on the reverse of the tallit. I decided to cover the serged stitched with ribbon. I have a large roll of bronze middy ribbon and a roll of maroon 1/4 inch velvet ribbon. The wide strip got the wider metallic ribbon, the narrower strip, the velvet.I stitched using a three step zig zag using gold metallic thread.





front of the tallit with gold stitching barely visible



The right side of the tallit has a bit of extra subtle glimmer going on. the back looks finished and pretty wonderful. As I was sewing the ribbons I thought about I was brought up at the height of the International Style pared down aesthetic. I thought about the dictum of form follows function and how I was busy doing an embellishment that actually was pretty functional. Aside from covering the stitching, the gold zig zag stitching and ribbon were also reinforcing the seams, making the tallit stronger.






The additional striping created by the ribbons creates a terrific effect from the back. The color in this set of photos is far closer to the actual color than the orange tinged fabric that you have been seeing on the other photos.




reverse of the tallit

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee.  If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it.    My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid.  I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed.   A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee  and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...
1 comment
Read more

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

 I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night.  I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1)  אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה  God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2)  אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר   May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3)  יָאֵר יְהֹ...
8 comments
Read more

A Passover loss

 My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of  linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin.  You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...
2 comments
Read more