Sometimes, it’s just hard

Before I begin, I want to say that I have really loved working on Tess’s tallit. Sometimes though a piece is marked by lots of errors along the way. This was one of those pieces. In my first attempt to sew down the sky panel, I had skewed something and despite measuring the organza to fit the tallit, it was short. I had to undo my sewing. The next pass went just fine. but I realized that I hated the look of the thread I had used to sew down the organza. I had to undo two rows of densely packed decorative stitching. That is never fun but I worked away at the task. I use an X-acto knife to take out stitching, and yes, I sliced my finger. After I bandaged myself, I saw that I had bled on the tallit. Work had top stop so I could wash the blood out of the piece.

After the tallit had dried, I tried again. This time I added striped ribbon underneath the scalloped stitching. I used silver on the sky side and gold for the ocean side.

I ended up topstitching the entire piece with the same scallop stitch but just done much narrower.

I also began work on the atara.

Usually, I don’t have quite as many disasters along the way. I do love this piece that you are now seeing unpressed but nearly complete. Tess picks up the tallit on Monday.

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sarah in nyc

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