DONE!!!!!

 When Bonnie met with me several weeks ago about making her tallit she spoke about wanting the stripes to resemble the ocean from her childhood on the Massachusetts coast. The beach we visited most often in my childhood was just a few miles away in Westport, Massachusetts, the spectacular Horseneck Beach.

I haven't been there in more than thirty five years but the colors of that water are deeply imprinted in my brain. I know that water not from looking at photos but from being inside of that water with long strands of seaweed wrapping themselves around my legs. I know that water from being tumbled by the waves, from floating on top of that water from having my mouth filled with that water.

I had dyed the grosgrain ribbon that borders the ocean dyed silk to look like sky---to tie in with the atara. I used the scallop stitch on my machine to look like ripples of water.

I used more of the silk that I had dyed to look like the water off the south coast of Massachusetts   for the pinot. I  embroidered a slate blue ribbon with more scallop stitching.

The colors are a variation of the colors that you see on that corner of the coastline.

Here are the pinot assembled, sewn into place with their scalloped borders. 

I used a blue sewing thread along with a copper metallic thread to embroider the eyelets.

It is a tiny point of glimmer like the sheen of copper colored sea weed in the shallows.

Yesterday I thought that I was nearly done.  I embroidered the ribbon the edge the atara. I stitched it to the atara.  There are some people who always  pin their work before sewing. Any of you who have been reading this blog for any amount of time can probably know that I tend not to pin my sewing. I can usually just press in the center point of a tallit and the center point of the atara, match those two center points and 90% of the time, maybe even 98% that works just fine and everything is exactly even --without the bother of pining or basting. Well, yesterday was that outlier. I was just over halfway done stitching a dense row of scallop stitching when I realized that the atara was off kilter. I took a deep breath ad then spent the next two hours carefully unpicking all of that dense stitching.

This morning I took a roll of  duct tape to help me remove all of the errant threads.  Thank goodness for duct tape. With the tallit (and atara) now cleaned up and ironed I could now re-attach the atara. I basted with big safety pins. The second time was the charm.

The atara is dyed to look like sky. I got the texture by dyeing wet on wet over tin foil which helped puddle the dye. The text reads In Your light we see light.

I dyed the silk from light to dark, and the letters go from bright to dark. Why yes, you are supposed to see this as Divine light helping us to see natural light.

I wanted the stitching around the atara to look  like clouds. That last line of darker stitching secures the atara to the tallit. ( My sewing friends should be assured that the thread in the bobbin exactly matches the flax colored silk and is almost invisible.)

Yes, I used different sized stitches on purpose to create a sense of movement.

I love how all of the elements of this tallit are in conversation with one another.

Of course the underside of the tallit also carries the design to give pleasure to  whoever sits behind bonnie at services.

Despite there being a whole lot going on the tallit feels calm and quiet. I loved being able to evoke a place that meant so much to me. I could look at this tallit for hours at a time. I have been looking over my right shoulder to sneak peeks as I have been typing this post.