sarah in nyc

 This tallit had some drama because the colors Judith and I had ordered looked completely different in person than they did on my monitor. What had looked lovely on screen looked just plain terrible in real life. I had realized that if I block printed over the colors that hated one another I could have all of the colors get along. I had some other questions/worries but Judith reassured me and told me that she completely trusted me. I was grateful for that trust that because I was no longer paralyzed with worry and I could just work problem solving as I saw fit. I have been working on this tallit for the past couple of months but I haven't been posting about it a whole lot.  I also dyed some strips of raw silk to work with the three colors that weren't getting along. I hand embroidered the atara and edged it with two rows of gold braid over forest green petersham ribbon. The pinot/corner pieces are made of more of the seafoam green silk that I had block printed and edged with t...

 It's Friday, but I won't be posting about food. I have the sinus Yucks once again. Luckily I had cooked too much shabbat dinner on previous weeks so I just pulled chicken and challah out of the freezer and they are warming up in the oven as I type. Despite feeling crummy I have actually gotten chunks of work done this week. Accompanying me in my work has been an excellent podcast,  Sew What . Any of my readers who are textile junkies will enjoy it. Wednesday I baked a bread. I had left a bit of dough from a batch I had baked last week in a bowl in the fridge.That old dough served as the starter for this loaf. I included some fine bulgur wheat in the dough. Before baking the bread I dampened the loaf with water, sprinkled flour over the dough and then scored the loaf. It tasted as good as it looks. I began working on Judith's atara. I started with some block printing on the silk. Then I drafted the letters on some cardstock with a square tipped paint brush. I had made the l...

 The nice thing about working away at something is that eventually---there is progress. Over the past many days I have been constructing stripes. As I work on building each stripe my goal is to have each stripe beautiful on it's own as well as working as part of the whole composition that will be the tallit. Sometimes when people ask about my work they ask me about the techniques that I usein creating a tallit. I always tell them that I am not married to technique. I can dye or embroider or piece or use any number of other methods.  Right now I love the two layers of block printing on these two stripes. The other day I began assembling the tallit. I construct the tallit on both the right and the wrong side--because the tallit is flipped back over thew shoulders. I start placing the stripes from the bottom of the tallit and work my way up. I stitched the bottom lines of metallit stitching by using a guide line on my sewing machine. All of the other elements are spaced a pressur...