Swimming in text

Elan and I started talking about the design for his atara several weeks after his wedding this past June. Every once in a while, we would have a bit of an emailed conversation but life got in the way and it took a several months until we got a concept nailed down.  Elan knew the verse we would be working with, right away

אִלּוּ פִינוּ מָלֵא שִׁירָה כַּיָּם

Even if our mouths could fill with song as

water fills the sea,

I had dyed the velvet to look like sky. Over the past few weeks I have been slowly embroidering all of the letters. Yesterday morning I realized that I was nearly done with that task.

It was time to start building the ocean. I had already dyed and set strips of  translucent silk gazar  that would become the ocean.

I wanted the atara to recreate the experience of swimming in a body of water. I wanted the letters to sit slightly inside the water the way a body does when swimming. I had all of the elements I needed to create the water. I knew more or less the feeling I wanted this piece to have. I wasn't exactly sure how I would achieve that.

I stitched the un-dyed layer at the top, sort of like foam on the topmost layer of water using a straight stitch. When I was most of the way stitching this first layer of silk I remembered my machine's scallop stitch which I thought looked appropriately watery.

I then added the yellow layer. I do recognize that it is crazy bright, but I knew (because I played with layering the dyed silk strips in a variety of combinations) that the colors just looked way better layered over the yellow. That crazy neon color just made everything else sing.


I had dyed the silk using very diluted dyes and let each layer of color dry before adding more color. the drying of the dyes left meandering paths of color on the silk.  I used those paths of color guide my cutting. I was using the movement of water and dye on the silk to create water..

  You can also  see that the various layers of not quite aligned silk create a watery looking moire effect similar to the play of light on water.

When I stopped working last night, I had created layers that looked frankly more like mountains than like water. It was pretty but not exactly what I wanted.

Sometimes a night's sleep is exactly what you need so you get a new perspective on a piece.

I added more layers of water that broke up the more solid geometry I had created the day before.

The water was beginning to look more watery. I kept thinking back to swimming in open water and what that experience is like visually.



I added rows of blue  stitching over the pieced water.

I love how the bottoms of the letters are just submerged in the water

as if they too are swimming and you came upon the verse bobbing in the water  during your swim.

I love swimming, but I am sometimes gripped with what my husband calls "fear of the deep".  I will often sing or think about biblical verses to get myself over that hump of fear or boredom during a long swim.  I will recite those verses over and over to get me through a difficult patch in my journey in the water.

 I am very nearly done with this stage of the project.

I am starting to think about how I will finish off the edges. This vintage ribbon may tie the atara in with the tallit.