The Pleasure of Sewing for Others

I know a calligrapher who is notorious for getting his work in late. Occasionally he has been known to deliver an unfinished Ketubah to a wedding, only to finish it after the wedding.

In college, I was the student begging her professors for extensions. I find though, that I prefer to get my work done at least a few days before the due date. For me, it makes for less anxious work.

Life, though, does not always cooperate. Last Sunday I was hit with the news that several friends were diagnosed with cancer. Then I got a call from another friend letting me know of his divorce. Monday I was then hit with what the Victorians used to call melancholia. I was simply too sad to work.

Naomi's tallit was due today as was her brother's tallit, the "Not Mets'" tallit. The bnai-mitzvah are not until early April. Normally, I wouldn't have to get the tallitot completed until late March. Yesterday, though, as my friend Ruth reminded me,the words that strike terror into every Jewish woman's heart were recited. We announced the month of Nisan, the month in which Passover falls. Both the twins' family and mine will be preparing for Passover and this was the last moment to meet before the great event.

Naomi's tallit was essentially done. I worked on her brother's last night and almost until they came to pick up their tallitiot. The "Not Met's" tallit kept presenting me with new challenges. Some of them I was able to solve elegantly. Others, with a bit less finesse than I would have hoped.

One of my sewing discussion groups has had a conversation during the past few days about sewing for others. Many of the members of the group wrote about how they dislike sewing for others. Some felt that the demands of others would be intolerable. Some felt that their own desire to do a perfect job would make sewing for other entirely too anxiety provoking.

That discussion made me think about working with this set of twins. I enjoyed meeting with them several months ago. I liked seeing how each of their minds worked. I like the process of learning what matters to them in a tallit.

As I worked on their tallitot during these many weeks, both of them were very present in my head. I kept thinking about what they wanted and what they liked as I made each decision. Pieces of our conversation kept floating around in my head as I worked.

Today as they tied their tzitzit, they and their parents recalled bits of that conversation and noted how I had incorporated comments the kids had made into each of their tallitot. My job is to take ideas, parts of ideas and turn them into something visible and tangible. I love seeing the look of recognition where a client sees that I have heard them.

While I work on a piece, my clients are living in my head. Once the piece goes home with my client, I am present in their lives for a long time. When I work with clients, their needs push me in unexpected directions. I never would have thought to make a tallit in blue and orange. I never would have selected the colors Naomi did. They are beautiful on her.

Working with others helps me to see beyond my own needs and my own taste. A tallit, so often, is a way of expressing one's relationship to the divine. It is so difficult to put words to that relationship. When I meet with a client we study the texts about and around putting on a tallit. So, when I then pull out lengths of different sorts fabric for my clients to drape around themselves, they understand intuitively that they need to select a fabric that helps to express that relationship. I don't need to hear why they chose a specific fabric. The fabric that is right is evident in how they hold their bodies.

When I make a piece for a client, the piece isn't about me. It is about my client. When they come to pick it up I love seeing that moment of recognition , when they see that the piece is about who they are and about their needs.

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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