Working My Way Through-- One Problem at a Time

There are times when a task seems really simple in theory, but the reality is that it is actually difficult. I have been faced with such a task working on Ezra and Shay's wedding tallit.

The tallit is 42 inches wide. The bottom width of each skirt panel is 48 inches wide.

That sounds like it should be easy. If this were paper I could just cut strips across the bottom of the skirt to make the tallit stripes. But this isn't paper I am making these stripes out of fabric which has a grain. If you cut the stripes off grain the fabric will shift, distort and ripple when I sew it to the tallit. And no, that isn't the desired look.

I am including this diagram about how to create a skirt with a fuller hemline so you can understand my problem a bit better. When you start out with a pencil skirt pattern, usually the yarns that make up a pencil skirt go north-south and east-west. A flared skirt has yarns that are like that in the center but get increasingly curved the closer you get to the side seams. Ezra's mom's dress is cut as a flared skirt.

One way to cut a straight line along the grain is to pull a thread and then cut along the thread. I tried to do that from the side seam and it just didn't work. Examining the raw edge at the waistline I realized that if I cut the strips of fabric, not across the skirt panels but from the waisband down to the hem I could manage to cut the strips without tearing my hair out too much anmd harvesting a bit more yardage out of the skirt.

It took me several days of thinking to figure out how to cut the strips. I then was faced with another problem. The tallit width is 42 inches. The skirt length is 28 inches. I need 84 total inches for each stripe,( one for each side of the tallit) . I finally figured out that, 28 x 3 =84. So each stripe needs to be made out of three strips of fabric the same width.

I began cutting strips last night. Today, I began sewing the strips together into the 84 inch lengths . I then serged each strip to a silk backing.

I now have three silk backed stripes made out of Ezra's mom's dress. Two are backed with blue silk noil and one with white. These stripes will each be edged with ribbon. I need to see how many more stripes I can harvest from this dress.

Ezra and Shay had really wanted me to back some of the strips with the lining. The lining is shorter than the outer fabric of the skirt. It is slippery--because it is a lining and I am aftraid that all of the qualities that make it a perfect lining for a floaty chiffon dress will make it a bear to use as the backing for a tallit stripe. I guess I will face that challenge tomorrow.

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מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

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