Tallit bag–getting it all together

This tallit bag is a gift from Elizabeth to her husband. The text on the inside of the cover comes from the Kuzari and was used by Elizabeth and her husband on their wedding invitation.

The text translates to

In my going out towards you

Towards me I found you

I needed to finish off the raw edges of the metallic linen. I also wanted to frame the text. Now that I own such a great collection of ribbon I knew that I had exactly the right thing.

I was then ready to do the preliminary construction of the bag. I wanted the bag to have a bit of heft. I happened to have a piece of a thin quilt that exactly fit the bill. I made a sandwich of the outside and the inside of the tallit bag filled with the bit of quilt. I sewed around the outside perimeter to secure the sandwich.

The raw edges then had to be finished off. The top edge of the pocket part of the bag got edged with the red sari brocade.

At first I had thought that a wide version of the gold metallic striped grosgrain would be perfect for the sides of the bag. The long stretch of vertical stripes just looked off.

So instead I used the metallic linen.

This edging was machine stitched on one side and hand stitched on the other side. I got the binding on the left side of the bag done last night.

Today I did the binding on the right and finished off the front flap of the bag. Here is the bag open.

And now closed.

The grosgrain give a nice heft to that front lip.

The bag has far more handwork that I had planned on doing. but I like that it is a nice clean looking piece.

Tomorrow I will finish off the atara, and then this really pleasant project gets put to bed.

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