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Showing posts with the label Rahamim's tallit bag

Completed!!!!

I’m really pleased by this tallit bag. The lines of quilting stiches were a last minute inspiration. I’m a little concerned about the durability of the orange drapery fabric from the 1940’s. Quilting will make it a bit more secure.  I also love how the horizontal quilting lines echo both of the ribbed fabrics that make up the bag.   I also like the little bits of light that the copper thread give to the tallit bag. I included some action shots of the progress of the stitching An now for the interior, The names of all of the wearers of the tallit. I love how the photos just peek out. The photos inside the bag, including the grandfather of the bar-mitzvah boy wearing the tallit that will live in the bag.   Enjoy the following dramatic shots of the bag.

Finally!!!!!

I finally got the images properly transferred to silk.   Perhaps the ink that my printer uses is no longer compatible with the Bubble Jet but the images washed out of the fabric when they were washed with detergent. I turned to an older. low tech method of transferring images to fabric, where you lift the toner off of a photocopy using iron on mending material and then transfer the image to the silk. It’s a two step process but I have done it often enough so that it’s second nature to me.   It is frustrating that something that ought to have taken fifteen minutes has taken nearly a weeks’ worth of  work time  to get right.  it is finally done so now I can work on getting the rest of the bag completed.

Failure

I have spent much of the last few days trying to transfer these images onto silk for  the lining  of the tallit bag.   I had prepared the silk shantung with a chemical that allows the ink from my printer to set permanently onto the silk.  The product has a really stupid name, Bubble Jet 2000, but it works really well. Printers don’t love to print fabric, so you have to trick them into the job. I had prepared the silk, and then ironed it onto some  wax coated  cloth backing with the trade name Chartex.  Chartex was created to back photographs. A neighbor had given me a box years ago. We had thought that it would work to actually transfer the image from a photocopy to fabric. The Chartex was useless for that task.  It is wonderful though for giving the fabric enough body so it can go through a printer without destroying it. Chartex is no longer being manufactured and I have most of a box of 100 sheets so I’m set until I find something bet...

Facing my fears

Sometimes I will work out a plan of action with a client during our initial meeting. It all makes sense to me during the  meeting. I know exactly what I’m going to be doing. As I think about the project in more detail, some aspects of the process seem truly terrifying.  During the couple of weeks that Rahamim’s tallit bag was in my apartment it seemed to get more papery. I was terrified that my plan of fusing the useable parts to interfacing would be a disaster. I was afraid that the useable bits of tallit bag might really be too old and shredded to use. Today I carefully cut out the largest useable part of the tallit bag and fused it to the  tricot interfacing.  The worn spot in the middle was where Rahamim’s mother sewed on the snap. This is what the back of the bag looked like. I guess this photo helps you to understand my fears about working with this fabric.   I also salvaged two more bits of useable fabric from the under-flap. Here are...