Finishing off Danielle’s Chuppah

required more basting than I have ever done in my life. because I had embroidered the lettering on the same side as the embroidered letters, I had to flip the middle of the chuppah over. That’s easy to say, but much more complicated to do.

First I tea dyed one of the lovely tablecloths that came to me by way of Vivian. I made some really strong tea, added it to hot water and then let the table cloth sit in the tea for about 20 minutes. I dried the cloth in the dryer.

The color was perfect. Here you see the cloth that Danielle's great, great aunt embroidered over the tea dyed cloth from Vivian's grandmother.

After basting the two cloths together, I cut out the center of the cloth and sewed all of the raw edges. then I flipped the sandwiched cloths, hand basted two two together and then inset pieced from the tea-dyed cloth where things didn’t quite line up. I machine stitched all of the raw seams with a three stepped zig-zag. Yes, it was a whole lot of work.

As I worked I thought about my collection of linens from Vivian. so much of it is pieced and mended, sort of Franken-linen. As I worked, I felt like I was very much in the tradition of women who took good care of their linens.

I then sewed on the tallit. the result was a little horrifyingly beige.

I realized that it was nearly impossible to read the text on the tallit. Danielle and I had talked about creating some sort of a medallion for the center of the chuppah.

I wrote out the texts in a spiral with gold acrylic paint. ( later on I bordered the medallion with a blue ribbon)

I also added gold to the center of the letters.

Much less of an ocean of beige. yes I did press and starch the cloth before I delivered it to Danielle.

This is the bag I made for the chuppah.

I brought the chuppah to Danielle. She was very happy.

I was delighted to be done. I wanted to do something lovely to reward myself. I ended up watching a wonderful lecture in Hebrew on YouTube on German Jewish liturgical music. It felt completely rewarding.

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