What I was too tired to write on Friday

In my last post I posted some photos of a tallit in progress but I was just too tired to write the text that explains what is going on with the tallit. I will now repost the photos and explain what that tallit is about.

יִשְׂמַח לֵב מְבַקְשֵׁי יְהֹוָה

Let the heart rejoice of those who seek God

The text appears both in Psalm 105 and chapter 17 of the book of Chronicles. The verse will appear on the neckband of the tallit.

The pinot or corner pieces will have the verbs in the first part of the verse.

שִֽׁירוּ לוֹ זַמְּ֒רוּ־לוֹ שִֽׂיחוּ בְּכָל־נִפְלְ֒אוֹתָיו: הִתְהַלְּ֒לוּ בְּשֵׁם קָדְשׁוֹ

Sing to Him, compose songs to Him, speak of all His wonders. Take pride in [uttering] His holy Name,

We chose to have the sky represent the Divine. The tallit is made out of periwinkle blue linen that I have washed and dried several times so it won't wrinkle like crazy when in use.

I have built up the color on the stripes using oil paint sticks---those are essentially fat crayons with the pigments embedded in solid linseed oil rather than wax like crayons.

I want the tallit to be drapey. If I turn and hem each of the applied stripes the layers of hem will make the tallit stiff. Below you can see that I have bound the stripes with vintage ( probably from the 1930s)

I ended up using nearly every bit of the checkerboard ribbon. It has been in my stash for at least ten years.

The other stripes will b edged with this ribbon of the same vintage. I added the embroidery to the ribbon because it balanced the color better with the addition of the blue embroidery.

Here are some more views of this tallit in progress.