sarah in nyc

Today, Rachel came over to tie her tzitzit with her mother and her grandparents.  I had put the  tallit on my dressmaking dummy so Rachel could see it as soon as she walked in. Despite the fact that there were some differences between what we had agreed  on in our initial meeting, and what I actually ended up doing, Rachel could see that  the changes I had made were good ones, that in the end, made the tallit a better one. After the tour of the tallit, we got to work tying the tzitzit/ritual fringes. I went over the meaning hidden in the numbers of wraps and knots. Most girls know the knot we use for the wrapping from making friendship bracelets. Most girls know the wrap we use as "Chinese staircase". Rachel had clearly done her time in camp. As soon as  I said, "Chinese Staircase" she was off and running. Then I went to teach Julie, Rachel's mom, Grandpa Larry and Grandma Marilyn how to do the knots. Grandpa Larry was having some troubles, until his daughter ...

Hurray!!! I finished Rachel’s tallit. All that is left to do is tie with tzitzit/ritual fringes with her. I like the tallit as a whole and all of the smaller elements that make up that make up the entire tallit. Some of the things that make me happy about the tallit are the ribbon I embroidered to border the stripes. Aside from the fact that it looks terrific ( which it does) I’m really thrilled to have a sewing machine that sews metallic thread without complaining or breaking the threads. I was able to embroider yards and yards of ribbon without any thread breakage. I’m also really happy with the fuse-able tricot that is reinforcing the silk. It’s nearly weightless , but adds just enough body to make the silk feel really luxurious. The interfacing will also give the shantung enough support to help it last several years longer. I’m really happy that Rachel’s mom and I were able to convince Rachel that brown would just not be as successful as a base color for the tallit. It w...

Rachel's tallit and bag - nearly done VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL Rachel had wanted a black and white checked border next to the wave.  I tried. I just couldn’t make it  work. Instead, she got a black and white pieced bias stripe border. to make up for the lack of checkerboard I added a row of stitching in a nifty checkerboard stitch in gold.  The outer edge of the stripe is made up of black middy braid to which I added the wave stitch. Unlike most pieced tallitot/prayer shawls the design is on the underside of the tallit as well. this tallit is particularly small, but Rachel is a small kid. She would look silly in a tallit that was much bigger. The bag was fun to make. I first fused black shantung to needle punch  interfacing.Then I stitched waves freehand using a chartreuse rayon thread. I added more delicate waves with a multicolored metallic thread. I used a chunk of dressmaker’s chalk ( thank you Anne!) to sketch out the letters for Rachel’s name. I ...

After stitching and cutting away layers of silk for the stripes on Rachel’s tallit,I have begun satin stitching all of the edges with gold metallic threads. I do this hand guided machine embroidery for two reasons.  Firstly, it seals the very shreddy raw edges of the silk shantung. The gold embroidery also packs a visual punch.  Rachel’s tallit will be pretty narrow. I plan to have the stripe on both the front and the back of the tallit. It’s easier to create one long piece and then to cut it up rather than piecing it all in small bits. I need to get some soft interfacing for the body of the tallit. I hope to get that tomorrow. I’m pretty happy with my progress.