Building a Branch

Earlier this year I read an article that showed up on my newsfeed about how to be a successful artist. The article stated that in order to be successful you need to come up with a recognizable style and then just stick to it--no matter what. After thinking about that for about a minute I realized that the article was talking about financial success rather than an artistic success.

When I make a piece I worry a whole lot more about the piece being a successful one rather than my bottom line. If I only used one technique only made tallitot or challah covers or Torah Mantles in one particular style I might be more financially successful but my work would be boring, and I would be bored by the process of making it.

When I had last posted about Benjy's Torah mantle I had just finished adding in the color with the oil paint sticks. As I types that last sentence I wasn't sure which verb to use. I use a paintbrush to take color from the surface oil paint stick and then paint it on the velvet. Perhaps it is painted.

The leaves looked nice but not quite finished. I thought that if I added a line of thin zig-zag stitching around the perimeter of each leaf that might do the trick.

Adding the zig-zag stitch was good, but it didn't quite do the trick.

I stitched in the veins in a dark blue thread, there happened to be a yellow embroidery thread in the bobbin and you can see a teeny bit of the yellow at each stitch. if you look carefully at the photo above you will see that the veining was not added to the top leaf in the photo.

From a distance, you probably can't pick out the stitching, but you will notice that the leaves just look better.

Then I realized that the stem needed a bit of help. I stitched long rows of stitches, darker at the edges and brighter towards the center to give the stem a bit of dimension.

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself because drawing isn't my strong suit.

The lettering for the dedication is supposed to sit on top of the stem of the branch. I had to figure out how to draft the lettering so it would sit in the right place and be properly proportioned. I needed to have an exact copy of the branch shape.

My brain ticked through possible ways to create a copy of the branch shape. Tick tick tick--- I remembered an ancient method of design transfer. I put a piece of paper under the mantle and then pricked holes along the outline of the branch. If I were living in ancient Rome I would have rubbed charcoal dust through the holes and been left with a line drawing of the branch.

After I was done I penciled in the shape.

Then I went over the lines with a marker.

I put tracing paper over the branch outline and then practiced my lettering until I was happy with it.

I placed the lettered tracing paper over the branch and taped it into place.

I then taped a piece of ironed cotton batiste over the letters pained on the tracing paper

and then I traced the letters onto the batiste.

After I baste the cotton batiste to the mantle I will begin embroidering the letters. I actually practiced on a scrap piece of velvet and have ideas about technique.

This kind of fine-tuning and problem solving gives me joy. I also think that it gives my work a kind of energy and life that it might not have if my work only had one look, or if I had only one path to problem-solving.

I am grateful for each and every craft and needlework book I read during my childhood years. I read hundreds and actually did remarkably little needlework during those years. Hundreds of sets of directions for hundreds of different needlework tasks are all shoved into the cluttered attic of my brain. Remarkably those ideas appear when needed as if my brain were filled with tidily organized file cabinets instead of the cluttered mess that my brain actually is.

During my next post about the mantle, I will share a tiny epiphany I had about embroidery.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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