Work and Play

 I have been working away on Benjy's Torah mantle. Creating this mantle has been all about managing an array of small tasks, some that are at first kind of terrifying. There are enough different tasks to do that I can shift away from terrifying and work on another bit of the job that I can manage at that moment.

It had taken ( as I described in my last post) many phone calls to get the wooden form for the top of the mantle. Some of the mantle tops that I have used in my previous Torah mantles were ordered from J. Levine, the Judaica supply store that sadly no longer exists. I had had two made at a local lumber yard. 

The former superintendent of our synagogue was a woodworker (and photographer, practitioner of origami, and a not bad calligrapher). I had commissioned him to make two mantle tops for me. John used 3/4 inch plywood because he wanted the mantle to be strong. That was actually a bit too sturdy for the usage but I was deeply touched by the love that he put into the task. 

I was a little surprised when I opened the wooden form sent by the Satmar embroidery house. The wood was really very thin and flimsy. It was a thin 1/4 inch plywood.

I reinforced it by ironing on the wax impregnated cotton I had used for the photo transfers of the havdalah bag texts. I fused the cotton to both the top and the bottom of the wooden form.

I covered the wooden form with four layers of batting that I stitched into place using gathering stitches.

Below you see the wooden form nicely covered by the batting and waiting for the batting to be removed from the holes.

For a moment I thought that my next step would be to cover the mantle top with the blue velvet. I realized that the batting needed to be covered in another fabric before the velvet was added. 

I dug out this fabric, purchased on our 2018 trip to Israel. It is covered with biblical verses, mostly from the Song of Songs.

No one will see this fabric. I know that my clients will appreciate that it is there.  You, my dear readers, know that it is inside the mantle.l No one else will be able to see that it is inside of the mantle.

I at first assumed that I would stitch the fabric to the batting, but as I cut it out I realized---"DUH! this is an upholstery job!" and stapled the fabric into place.

I'm sorry I didn't take photos of how I cut open the openings. I also didn't include action shots of me struggling to fit the wooden rings into the upholstered holes.

A mallet was extremely helpful. I haven't yet trimmed the inside messy bits of fabric but don't worry, I will before this job is completed.

Now that more of the mantle has come together, there are some details that have needed to be improved. 

The leaves needed a bit more emphasis. Some hand stitching using a strand of bright kelly green and one of a soft greyish teal did the trick.

I also beaded some of the areas that needed just a bit more sparkle.

The Torah mantle is going to live in a synagogue just a little bit uptown. My clients wanted the mantle to connect with the windows in the room.

I thought that I could recreate the look of the windows by weaving ribbons in the colors found in the windows and using that weaving as the border at the top of the mantle.

I ordered spools of ribbon in the two shades of blue, the soft yellow and the red.  I have tried several failed experiments. A braid was a disaster. I tried to construct a simple loom out of cardboard. This too was a disaster. Sorry, no photos, you need to trust me. Disasters. 

Then I came up with the idea of cutting slits into the wider blue ribbons and then weaving the ribbons through the slits.

This was better but it was still too messy.

I then tried cutting the slits into the lighter blue ribbon rather than the darker blue ribbon.

It was kind of better but still not quite right. I was also concerned that the ribbon trim was just too bright and would pull focus from the rest of the mantle. 

I added some beads in the colors of the ribbons to the beads that make up the mantle. That actually helped some. my other thought was to encase the ribbon trim in some black mesh to tone the colors down.

While I was mulling over how to solve those problems I did the terrifying job of cutting the piece to size and the even more terrifying job of lining it.

Here you see from top to bottom the blue velvet, a piece of white wool coating that will give the mantle somebody, and the upholstery weight jacquard that will serve as the lining.

I basted everything into place with safety pins and then serged all of the raw edges together.

Here is the mantle safety pinned into position.

Now you can see a peek of the lining.

A wide blue grosgrain ribbon finishes off the sides and gives the edge that will be handled a great deal a bit of extra stability.

I have covered the serger stitching on the bottom hem with stacked ribbons that I embroidered. 

Tomorrow I have to go downtown to buy fringe for the bottom edge. Once I sew on the fringe I can hand sew the dress portion of the mantle to the upholstered top.

I also may have actually solved the problem of the ribbon weaving for the top trim

At last, I have the right look. The whole point of the top trim is to cover the joining stitches. I still have some technical issues to wrestle with the woven ribbon but this is getting there.

Yesterday my husband's buddy from second grade and his wife came for a visit.

We went out for lunch and then for a walk. We went to visit the community garden in Riverside Park. I have always loved the community garden. Unlike a professionally landscaped garden which tends to be polite, the people who plant in the garden plant exuberantly.

The gardeners often choose slightly offbeat varieties of familiar flowers. 

The community garden feels like a botanical version of the people who live in the neighborhood.

 

I was so glad that I was able to take the time to visit.