Getting towards the finish line

Rachel's tallit and bag - nearly done VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Rachel had wanted a black and white checked border next to the wave.  I tried. I just couldn’t make it  work. Instead, she got a black and white pieced bias stripe border. to make up for the lack of checkerboard I added a row of stitching in a nifty checkerboard stitch in gold. 

The outer edge of the stripe is made up of black middy braid to which I added the wave stitch. Unlike most pieced tallitot/prayer shawls the design is on the underside of the tallit as well. this tallit is particularly small, but Rachel is a small kid. She would look silly in a tallit that was much bigger.

The bag was fun to make. I first fused black shantung to needle punch  interfacing.Then I stitched waves freehand using a chartreuse rayon thread. I added more delicate waves with a multicolored metallic thread. I used a chunk of dressmaker’s chalk ( thank you Anne!) to sketch out the letters for Rachel’s name. I went over the chalk line with a wide satin stitch in gold.  The letters needed a bit more---more, so I added peacock colored iridescent large seed beads. I have been doing lots of hand beading lately.

I lined the bag by serging the periwinkle blue shantung lining to the black embroidered outside of the bag. I covered al of the edges with grosgrain ribbon and stitched the wave motif to hold it all into place.

I have already pieced three of the corners, I still have to do the fourth, add the lettering and then get those corners into place. each corner will be pieced black and white silk. I like the visual fun of different corners. I also think that it is a good visual reminder that there are many ways to approach the divine.