Finishing up

Jack's tallit is complete.

The whole thing came together quickly and easily. That's not something that I can assume.

I will show you photos of the whole tallit in it's glory in another post.

Jane's tallit made of the antique lace looks beautiful and keeps presenting technical challenges. It's time to make the eyelets. Normally this is a piece of cake. I use an X-acto knife to make little cross cuts , stitch around the resulting hole and then finish with a button hole stitch.

This time, well not so easy. The place where it makes the most sense to put the eyelets onthe face of the tallit included crochet lace ( danger of unraveling) ad also a seam with layers and layers of fabric which just makes things hard to do.

I am part of an online sewing discussion group that is populated with really smart people who know far more than I do about some of the more arcane aspects of sewing. Sometimes the discussions are far too technical for me or focus on issues that I don't think I have any interest in.  But i do continue to read what my friends have to say.

I can't tell you for sure which conversation on that list led  to the solution to my problem, but I know that it is a distillation of the wisdom of my sewing buddies. 

But first I stitched a circle in black thread to secure the stitching on the beautiful doiley. Then i cut open a hole  and finally I did the buttonhole stitch.

I have loved working on this tallit. But every step of working on it has forced me to stop and  figure our problems in a new way.

None of my usual tried and true work methods have worked in this piece. The process of sequential problem solving  has been good for my brain. The time for thinking through and problem solving has made this piece take much longer than I had anticipated. the results makes me really happy.

Two eyelets are still waiting to be done. the atara needs to be sewn on. Living with these special textiles for the past few months has been pretty wonderful. Soon they will return to their rightful owner.