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Busy busy busy....


 I have been crazy busy for the past several days, and despite that, I am still behind on nearly everything I need to do.

I am working away on the vintage lace tallit. I was feeling a little nervous about some of the aspects of the tallit so I decided to fake myself out by working on the pinot- the corner pieces.

My client had brought me two quite spectacular doilies to use for the pinot. there are however four corners on a tallit. My client had shown me how on a tallit made out of other family linens, the monogram was used for one of the pinot.

One of the things that fascinated me about this old linen piece is that the lace was really high quality work. The monograms, although meaningful to my client are actually not such nice work. There is a story in that mismatch of handwork. I don't know for sure what it is. I suspect that the fancy linens were handed down to a less fancy family.

Here is one of the doilies stitched to the gold backing.
I created a composition of sorts out of the monogram and some of the lace.

The font choice for the monogram is gorgeous. The stitching is lumpier than one tends to see from fine needlework from the era. I also think that the thread used was long  long stapled embroidery floss, but rather simple sewing cotton which is lacking in sheen and is hard to handle in a satin stitch.

This is casting no aspersions on my client's ancestor, I'm pointing out that there is a story here. I plan to cover my own machine zig zag stitching with hand couching.
Here are the four pinot all together.
 In the afternoon I had three client meetings in a row.

The first two was a set of twins I have known since before they were born. They came on their own, actually one after the other. One of the twins has a broken leg, the other has been suffering from a month of migraines so neither was working with all jets running. We all made allowances for one another and ended up doing some really good work.

I had to make sketches to show the parents where we are going with the tallitot.
I'm delighted with how I made the sketches.


This one is made out of black elastic and painted paper. It was the quickest way to show what the painted silk would look like next to the black charmeuse.

The other tallit will have a slightly different design on either side.

The third client of the day came with his mother so a crude pencil sketch sufficed. I am working on sourcing materials for all of the projects and fielding calls about some possible very exciting work. I will keep all of you posted if the exciting stuff comes to pass.


Comments

  1. Cathy PerlmutterJanuary 20, 2016 at 10:07 AM

    Sarah, these are just exquisite. I'm sharing on Facebook and with the Pomegranate Guild!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sarah JacobsJanuary 20, 2016 at 10:45 AM

    Oh Cathy, so sweet. I was starting with good source material though.I have seen tons of lace edging that was crochet by the yard, because old textiles come to my house to die. But this stuff is just so refined, so beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 20, 2016 at 11:10 AM

    Interesting use for antique textiles. I have a bunch of them and have often wondered how to incorporate them into something.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sarah JacobsJanuary 27, 2016 at 10:02 PM

    Thanks!Using the textiles feels like inviting both the owners and the makers of these textiles into our lives.

    ReplyDelete

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