Fixing a Torah mantle

Today I was asked to fix a Torah mantle.

If you only looked at the top of the mantle you would think that it looked like it was in good shape.

The bottom inch or so was completely looked chewed up.The velvet had worn away.

In fact, the last couple of inches at one of the sides was completely gone.

The mantle was made out of a shade of plum velvet that was popular during the late 1980's and would be difficult if not impossible to match.

I thought that I could construct a ribbon to cover all of the ugly bits.

I began by stitching two rows of plum velvet ribbon to the navy blue grosgrain.using a bronze metallic thread. it was a good beginning but not quite enough.

I then noticed the embroidered border of grapes at the top of the mantle. So I painted a row of grapes in the center of the ribbon.

It took a while.

I sewed the ribbon onto the mantle and patched up some of the really grotty bits on the inside of the mantle.

I noticed that the mantle originally had some jewels near the couched embroidery near the bottom of the piece that had fallen off at some point.

I replaced the fallen jewels with spirals of couched gold embroidery.

I also fixed some of the damaged embroidery.

I'm pleased that my fixes look intentional rather than a clumsy patch.

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