Numbering the stars

 

Often, the hard part of doing a project isn't the work itself but the hard work of staying at the work even though it might be tedious.  Embroidering a biblical verse is my case in point. My usual trick to keeping at the task is to embroider the letters in a random order. I had hopes to have the colors used in the embroidery to shift across the verse so that trick to keep my nose to the grindstone wouldn't work. I had to come up with another trick to keep myself focused and not do dumb stuff to avoid the task at hand.

Instead I pulled away the threads of the batiste as I finished each word.

It is actually easier to work on small segments than big ones.

This tallit is due soon so I really needed to just keep working away.

מוֹנֶ֣ה מִ֭סְפָּר לַכּוֹכָבִ֑ים לְ֝כֻלָּ֗ם שֵׁמ֥וֹת יִקְרָֽא׃

He reckoned the number of the stars;

to each He gave its name.

Psalm 147:4

 Given that this is the text on the atara/neckband I wanted to keep the sense of endless stars going throughout the piece.

I embroidered navy ribbon that will frame both the atara and the pinot/corner pieces.

I added some glass beads to the ends of the atara. I am loving all of the stars.

My client wanted 

וְאָנֹכִי עָפָר וָאֵפֶר

for I am but dust and ashes

Genesis 18:27

to be the text on the pinot.

There are only three words, and there are four corners. My initial thought was to just have a big star on that fourth corner piece. But then I thought about how all of us are made up of cosmic dust so I decided to keep going with the star imagery.  I like how using the star imagery on the corner pieces creates a conversation between the verse on the atara and the one on the pinot.

The orange chalky circle is a circle of chalk that I have used to help me with letter placement. The eyelet will be in that eyelet. I painted the letters rather than embroidering them---because this piece needs to be done really soon.

These are the elements ready to be sewn onto the embroidered shawl.

I'm really excited about how good this all looks together.

Below is what the folks on Bloomberg radio was calling a major snow event.