Rebuilding the Mappah

Well, this has been a week with a great deal of progress on the restoration of the Schechter Mappah.

I refreshed the lettering on the Ultrasuede panels with text. You see this panel with two lines of text re-blackened.

Here is the text for the kaddish re-blackened and I hadn't yet repainted the cute little decorative elements.

There are so many tasks that need to be done to restore this piece. The next task that I was ready to tackle was edging the blue wool around the dome.

This was a multi staged process.

Stage one was stitching the wool around the edges of the Ultrasuede.

That step required some X-ray vision, or more accurately some peeking beneath the surface to see that I was placing my stitches in the right place. The stitching both stabilizes the blue wool and serves as a guide line for the next step in the process.

After I completed the row of stitching I trimmed the blue wool close to the stitching line so i could begin the next part of the job.

Stage two was stitching a blanket stitch around the raw edge of the blue wool. A blanket stitch covers the raw edges and keeps them from fraying. Luckily I had purchased a skein of blue wool earlier this year that was perfect for the task at hand.

After several hours that task was complete.

It looked good but needed a bit more definition. The definition was provided by a row of chain stitching. Please ignore the passive voice. This was a few more hours of hand stitching. The hand stitching is decorative but also functional. The stitching attaches the blue wool to the white wool beneath

Next, I refreshed the text on the dome. It is a blessing to prepare oneself for the study of Torah.

There was also an additional line of text that I can no longer decipher. You can see the pentimento of that text. I will do something about that when I figure out what to do.

I am also blanket stitching the top edge of the blue wool. I am 3/4 of the way through that task. The piece is about 50 inches wide---it's a whole lot of hand stitching. I have gotten enough done so that I am no longer in a panic about getting this piece completed.

As I hand stitch I think about the problems that I will have to solve down the road.

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