A Day's Work

 I suppose that if I had a stand alone studio for my work that I would show up and work away at just my client work and go home when I was done for the day. Instead, like the work in the pre-industrial world the labors, the one I am paid for and the ones I do to take care of my household just kind of flow into one another. 

This morning I knew that I had to set the color on a scarf I had been commissioned to make. Setting the color means lots of long hot steamy ironing with paper between the iron and the painted silk. The color setting works better with a nice padding beneath the work. I also have a healthy stack of ironing that needed to be done.

So I began the work of  setting the color by ironing a red plaid cotton tablecloth that had been my mother's.

After the tablecloth was reasonably smooth and folded into 1/8ths I started pressing this pretty piece that you see here from the reverse so you can admire the nice stitching.

I'm not sure of the original use. perhaps it was an anti-Macassar  or a curtain for a cabinet or a table covering.

This was probably embroidered no later than the early 1920s and may have been done during WWI. The Battenberg lance embellished linen was likely purchased rather than being home made.

The quality of the stitching is wonderful as is the use of color.

I used this piece to cover the pillow my husband leaned on during Seder.

I also ironed this piece of lace that I had used to decorate a cookie tray.

I can't put an exact date on this piece but it belonged to my friend  Alix's grandmother. It is European hand made bobbin lace. It could have been purchased on a trip abroad before WWII or might have been purchased in a fancy linen store here in New York.

I then ironed some of  my mother's napkins that had hidden themselves when I had ironed the napkins we had used for Seder.

These were purchased in the late 1950's by mail order from Madeira.

After I tackled a batch of pillow cases---the purple and navy striped ones you see in my linen closet. Since you asked, I made them out of beautiful smooth cotton shirting several years ago.  You can also pause to admire how most of the patterns on my pillow cases all get along so well together.

Now that some of the household ironing was done I could get to work on my work-work setting the color. The ironed red plaid tablecloth served as an excellent padding for the color setting.

It took several passes of the iron but at last it was done.

So now I am going to rewind and talk about this scarf and how it came to be. If this were a TV show then the video would be run in sepia now. When my older son was in elementary school he got a ton of  special services, speech therapy, occupational therapy , therapy therapy and he had a special educator assigned to him. This was public school ( Many thanks to all of you for paying your taxes).  The educators who worked with my son, were nearly every one, wonderful. We were really grateful.

Every year at holiday time I would make a selection of scarves and my kids got to shop among the scarves for their teachers. The year my son was graduating in addition to the holiday gifts I also made the teachers end of the year gifts. 

I dyed silk scarves and then had my son tell me what he had learned from each of his teachers. I painted my son's words on the scarves.  I loved the idea of their wearing my son's gratitude around their necks. Yes, this was a really well received gift.

So a little while back my son's elementary school special educator got in touch with me and asked if  I would be willing to make a scarf as a gift for a friend of hers. Her friend had become a-mitzvah as an adult  on Parashat Yitro.

We looked through the Torah reading for the week of the bat-mitzvah and the verse that she thought felt right for the scarf was Exodus, 18:18

 כִּֽי־כָבֵ֤ד מִמְּךָ֙ הַדָּבָ֔ר לֹא־תוּכַ֥ל עֲשֹׂ֖הוּ לְבַדֶּֽךָ׃

For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.

I had thought that since the phrase we were using was so short we could also use the recipient's name verses. There is a tradition to recite a verse that starts with the first letter of your name and ends with the last letter and has the other letters within it at the end of the amidah.

Well, the woman who is to get this scarf has the Hebrew name Rachel Hannah. Hannah has a beautiful verse, actually, an array of lovely moving, meaningful verses. The name Rachel has an awful, awful verse that is used traditionally. All of the alternative verses were terrible as well  We couldn't use the name verses. 

While I was madly cooking for Passover I was playing with possible text layouts in my head but I hadn't quite solved the puzzle for myself.

I started to dye the silk.

The dyes are all damp here and it dried quite a bit lighter. I had to go back and add a few more layers of color.

I had salted the damp dyed silk to create a bit of texture.

Several layers of dye later and with the base color set on the scarf I began to calligraph the letters. There wasn't quite enough contrast between the letters and the scarf.

 It was OK but not great. It was time to zhuzh up the letters.

I added oil paint stick in "German Silver" a dark shimmery silver and in metallic gold and then outlined the letters in black.

I also added more block printing in a sky blue.

It all came together.

At last I am pleased with it. This piece is completed and the stack of ironing that needs to get done is a bit smaller. Not a bad day's work.