sarah in nyc

I learn new things from each tallit, from each commission. I guess what I learned from this one is a Zen acceptance of my making errors. I sewed two of the pinot/corner pieces on the wrong side of the tallit. Yes, I sewed with a teeny tight zig-zag. So I had to carefully undo my sewing. It was at this point late at night. Tess was picking up the tallit the next day. I really hate finishing up my work at the last minute, because it always seems to ask for disaster. I also know that working when tired is a more certain path to disaster, so I put away the tallit and began again the next morning. I got the pinot sewed on correctly. I also made the eyelets without any further adventures. But by this point I was waiting for one to happen. I had my dressmaking dummy set up so Tess and her mother could see the tallit as soon as they walked in. Tess kept thanking me. Clearly, she was pleased. We began to tie the tzizit. Tess, like most girls her age, had long experience making frie...

Here is Tess’s atara.  I’m pretty pleased. center of the atara and now the entire tallit I still have to make the pinot/corner pieces.. I dyed the silk but have to make them and sew them on. I also cooked today. The challah that  here you see rising is now baked. Today is Caveman Shabbat at our house. beef ribs chicken wings Our guest is someone who is nearly family. You need to be really comfortable with your guests when you have Caveman Shabbat. Yes, there will be vegetable matter at this meal, another take on last week’s winter salad. The completed Bein Gavra The Bein Gavra gets presented at services tomorrow. A big weekend. Shabbat Shalom to all.

Before I begin, I want to say that I have really loved working on Tess’s tallit. Sometimes though a piece is marked by lots of errors along the way. This was one of those pieces. In my first attempt to sew down the sky panel, I had skewed something and despite measuring the organza to fit the tallit, it was short. I had to undo my sewing. The next pass went just fine. but I realized that I hated the look of the thread I had used to sew down the organza.  I had to undo two rows of densely packed decorative stitching. That is never fun but I worked away at the task. I use an X-acto knife to take out stitching, and yes, I sliced my finger. After I bandaged myself, I saw that I had bled on the tallit. Work had top stop so I could wash the blood out of the piece.   After the tallit had dried, I tried again. This time I added striped ribbon underneath the scalloped stitching. I used silver on the sky side and gold for the ocean side.   I ended up topstitching the en...

I’m working away on Tess’s tallit.  I decided to get to work on her tallit bag. I made Tess’s sister’s tallit a few years ago. her tallit bag was made out of an upholstery weight olive green velvet. The bag was embellished  with vintage lace that had belonged to a relative.  We thought that it would be nice to use some of the other vintage laces in the family treasure trove. A couple of weeks ago, Tess's mom sent me a bag of old lace. It was lovely stuff. Unfortunately, much of it was too fragile to use on the outside of a tallit bag. It seemed like an invitation for destruction of the old and fragile textiles. there was one hardy piece of corded lace pictured here. I suppose I could ask Tess’s mom to go through the lace she inherited and ask her to find some sturdier lace. I suppose I also could have gone into my own stash of old textiles and found something that would work. I have been doing lots of stenciling for the bein gavra . I have stencils on the brain. I d...

Yesterday, Tess came by to work on her tallit. Yes, she was pleased with the base color of the tallit. (In the same color family as my dining room walls, but not quite as flat and dark a color.) Sky fabric over dyed silk twill Tess’s task yesterday was to paint the strip of ocean and the strip of sky on silk organza. My job, particularly when working with  kids of bar- mitzvah age, is to demystify the process of making things.  I have found that too often that when people teach others how to make things they are so full of dire warnings that it makes it hard to proceed  without being in something of a panic. Maybe it comes from my years teaching day care in a crunchy granola day care center. Also if you have pretty silk with a wonderful texture and choose pretty colors to work with, as long as the entire piece of fabric is filled with color, you just can’t go wrong. I kept reminding Tess when she would look at me for more direction, “ You just can’t mess this up.”...