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Showing posts with the label Jean's tallit

Tying tzitzit

It took a while, actually a long while to get this tallit completed. It also took a while for Jean's schedule to coordinate with mine so she could come tie her tzitzit. Yesterday was the day Jean would see her completed tallit for the first time. I loved her tallit. I thought it was great. I had worked hard to listen to all of Jean's spoken and unspoken desires for this tallit. Never the less, i am always a bit anxious when a client sees a piece completed for the first time. What If my instincts are off? What if Jean hates the tallit? When jean walked in to my dining room and saw her tallit on my dressmaking form she said, "I'm stunned". It took me a few moments to figure out if this was bad stunned or good stunned. She was good stunned.  Next it was time for Jean to tie her tzitzit. Jean is a worrier. I assured her that even if she totally messed up no children or cute little animals would be hurt. I showed her how one of the great things about tzitzit i...

Jean's tallit - now complete

I have loved working on this tallit.  jean is an adult who decided that she wanted a tallit, not for any external reasons like reaching a particular age but because of her own careful thoughtful decision. Amazon.com Widgets The making of this tallit has taken a long time. Usually I am a fast decision maker. But in working on this tallit for Jean it has helped me to do all of my decision making in the careful and thoughtful way that she does. Like Jean, this tallit is deceptively simple when you first look at it. But also like Jean, the more interesting the tallit gets the longer you look at it. Like Jean, the quiet side of the tallit faces outward, never the less you see the glimmerings of the flashier side through the quiet front of the tallit. You see a bit of the lining turned towards the outside of the tallit. I could look at this tallit all day. I had originally thought that just painting the letters for the atara would be sufficient.  But...

Failing my way to success

I have been working since last week on the border for Jean's atara/tallit neckband. The border serves both ta visual function and well as a structural one. Visually, just about anything looks better with a good border. ideally the border will repeat or emphasis elements that are found elsewhere in a tallit, its a visual coda. Amazon.com Widgets From a structural point of view a good border serves the same function as those round white loose-leaf reinforcements that most of us used in elementary school. It gives an area of tallit that gets a fair amount of wear some additional stability. The fabulous silk Jean chose for her tallit has a complicated strip pattern with straight stripes as well as squiggly zig zaggy stripes woven into the fabric.  I realized that if I embroidered a ribbon with a combination of stitches and threads I could create something similar to the look of the stripes on the silk. Given the size of the atara that meant embroidering 68 inches of r...

Food Friday- side dish edition and a bit of a tallit

My husband is usually pretty neutral on the topic of food. My late mother in law was at best an anxious cook with a complicated relationship with food. My mother in law was deeply suspicious of things like spices which she approached with great trepidation. In the early 1990's my sister joined us for a Thanksgiving at my in laws. My sister had brought one of the dishes and wanted to add a bit more flavor to what she was planning to serve. She reached into my mother in law's spice cabinet and pulled out a couple of dusty jars from the Eisenhower administration.  Amazon.com Widgets My husband grew up thinking of food as fuel. One ate to keep from dying, but eating per se is not a source of pleasure. And yet, despite growing up this way, occasionally my husband gets all soft eyed late in the week when I am starting to plan for Shabbat dinner and mention a food that appeals to him. This week I my husband started talking about cauliflower puree.  When my husba...

In which an error makes things better

Jean and I went shopping for the fabric for her tallit a few months ago. She had chosen a delicious black ribbed silk for the body of the tallit. Jean also fell in love with a complex striped silk that included stripes in satin , and gold brocade. The stripes silk was expensive. it was sold by the panel. The stripe pattern didn’t repeat. My original plan was to have the stripes continue to the inside of the tallit.   Once I got the fabric home I realized that this was not possible.  there simply wasn’t enough of the same element of the stripe pattern to have the same bit of the stripe pattern on both the face and the lining of the tallit. I spent a little while feeling completely stymied by the problem. Jean, ever gracious, was prepared to find new  new fabric.  I was not ready to give up that easily. She had invested a fair amount of money in the fabric. I didn’t want to see such beautiful fabric go to waste. Also Jean is a really careful decider. It takes...

It’s Spring

After a long and difficult winter, it is finally spring, not just by the calendar but by the weather as well. The street trees have begun to bloom. I am also doing the spring time task of catching up on ironing all of the table cloths I used during Passover. Well, I actually haven’t gotten through all of the cloths.  I have done about half of them. I also ironed most of the napkins we used for the two Seders. Unlike my mother who was a big believer in using matching napkins at a meal, I use a mix of similar napkins. Some in the stack are from my mother, others I inherited from other people.  All of them are roughly the same size and are ivory linen with taupe cutwork. I think that like the various people at the table, they can get along even if they are not identical.   I also began constructing the stripes for two very different tallitot for two very different people. This black gold and blue tallit is for Jean.   She had taken a  tallit wor...