Further progress and musings on the Not-Mets tallit

Sometimes working on a tallit feels less like sewing and more like construction work. The "Not Mets" orange and blue tallit is no exception. I have been working on constructing the stripe which are being made out of four different colors of silk shantung. The four colors are also four entirely different qualities and weights of fabric.

If you were someone taught to sew by a home-ec teacher, you would know that this is not a good thing to do. You are supposed to sew fabrics of similar weights one to another. I am self taught, so I am going to pretend that I don't know this piece of sewing wisdom.

One of the major reasons for this feigned ignorance is the fact that it is impossible to find four colors of shantung in the same weight. While the Shantungs that I purchased, are probably not hand woven, the tangerine colored silk feels like it was made on not quite mechanized looms made with silk threads that were not particularly closely inspected for uniformity. It looks a whole lot like the scarves being sold as Thai silk. In short, it has the feel and look of hand woven work. The dark blue silk is made with fine threads evenly woven. The two other silks fall between the two extremes.

So why did I buy four silks that vary so widely? Because for this tallit, I was selecting fabrics for their color. I went to several stores to find the right silks. Orange must be out of favor at the moment because most stores didn't have any orange shantung at all. None, not one bolt.So, I had to choose from what was out there.

Shantung was the first silk that I ever sewed with. Shantung has many lovely qualities. Unlike chiffon, it stays put when you cut it. Unlike a satin, it's easy to sew and the layers of silk don't decide to go visiting relatives on opposite sides of the globe as you stitch it. Shantung does have one unpleasant quality. It shreds like crazy. When I work with it long threads of silk migrate away from the strips of fabric and end up wrapping themselves around my feet. Before I leave the house I have to make sure that my legs are not covered with long silk threads. The colors are pretty, but not what wants to wear walking down Broadway.

Ethan, my client for this piece wanted a tallit that was blue and orange but didn't feel like a "Mets" themed tallit. We decided that I would do a variant on Seminole piece work. For those of you not familiar with the term, the Seminole Indians in Florida, developed a technique of slicing and dicing fabrics that creates complex patterns. When I started sewing in the early 1990's I began by making quilts. Seminole piece work was experiencing a revival.

When I began sewing, I was a religious reader of Threads Magazine, which in those days was a hand work magazine of wide range. Issue after issue I would be introduced to mind-blowing techniques that I just had to try, as son as I had finished reading the article introducing the technique. For me, it was heady reading. These days Threads has a much more narrow focus of garment making, which is nice, but not nearly as much fun as learning how to make a rug loom out of discarded crutches. No, I didn't make the loom, but it's just nice to know that one can.

The stripes on this tallit are being made in a wild interpretation of Seminole piece work. The tallit should look fun from both far away and close up. You can see a chunk of the pieced stripe. Don't let the messiness throw you. It will look all tidy when all the raw ends are enclosed.

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...

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...

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 ...

sarah in nyc

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