sarah in nyc

I have been working away on the tallitot for the twins. there have been nights where I have laid awake in bed trying to problem solve. So at this point: One tallit is complete with stripes turned and top stitched One tallit has it’s stripes complete. The tallit is stitched together but still needs to be turned and top stitched One atara is complete One is nearly so One set of pinot are done These are the stripes on one of the tallitot. This is the evolution of one of the atarot.  First I painted the text on the grosgrain ribbon. Then I couched metallic thread for the border. I decided to add a hand couched motif on each end. I began with a circle, and then thought that a bit more was needed. This is what I ended up with. Couching, that is stitching down cording with thread is a great way to use threads that are otherwise too difficult to embroider. In this case, I used two otherwise impossible to use threads. The spool with the heavier thread is a rayon Lur...

Yesterday Kira came by to finish tying her tzitzit. She had made a first visit last week but was nearly cross-eyed with exhaustion. Luckily, she lives in the neighborhood so it was easy to reschedule for a time when she wasn’t falling asleep on her feet. Kira wisely decided that her tallit really did need an atara. I made s simple one painting the same scrollwork  motif that I had painted on her pinot /corner pieces. I also stitched on silver sequins on both ends for a little bit  of extra oomph. Kira DID NOT want more text. I like having a bit additional light near the face. She was really pleased  with the result, both of the atara and her tzitzit tying. Last night was the eighth night of Chanukah. Earlier in the week we had given our kids Amazon gift cards. This is what my youngest bought for himself. I think he will actually get a good deal of wear out of them. He plans to wear them as street shoes.] A couple of people wrote to me b...

Sometimes working on a tallit can have terrifying parts. Ella chose a relatively expensive silk. It’s delicious to touch. On the other hand, the fact that it is so blindingly white means that there is little room for my errors to hide. Because it is relatively expensive, I have just enough to make the tallit. there isn’t margin for error.  When I was much younger these sorts of large multi part tasks used to terrify me into paralysis. When I was in my early 30’s I figured out a way around that paralysis. I work on the least scary part of the job, even if it makes no sense  from the point of view of efficient work. I am supposed to quilt wings for the atara/ neckband.  rather than work on that, I decided to work on the pinot/ corner pieces. They are supposed to look like clouds. Two layers of flannel back the silk and I stitched away with silver metallic thread. This piece will be cut into smaller squares. I had thought that each square could suggest a segment of ...

Naomi is a twin. I'm making a tallit for her and one for her brother. When I was growing up, it was fashionable to treat twins as if they were a set of book ends. Twins were dressed alike and expected to be alike, even if they were not. Fortunately, Naomi and her brother have parents who get that being born on the same day does not mean that they share a brain and a soul. Naomi wasn't even sure if she wanted a tallit before she met with me. By the time she left though, she had decided that she did want a tallit. She wanted a tallit that was fairly quiet. She chose this not quite a color called fawn. The fabric she chose though, is a really lovely charmeuse. It feels wonderful on. I have discovered that my clients fall into one of two camps, the ones that love smooth and silky and the ones that don't. Naomi is a smooth and silky loving girl. I have been working on creating the stripes for this tallit. I have been using an embellishemnt technique adapted from Bird Ross...

Sometimes working on a tallit feels less like sewing and more like construction work. The "Not Mets" orange and blue tallit is no exception. I have been working on constructing the stripe which are being made out of four different colors of silk shantung. The four colors are also four entirely different qualities and weights of fabric. If you were someone taught to sew by a home-ec teacher, you would know that this is not a good thing to do. You are supposed to sew fabrics of similar weights one to another. I am self taught, so I am going to pretend that I don't know this piece of sewing wisdom. One of the major reasons for this feigned ignorance is the fact that it is impossible to find four colors of shantung in the same weight. While the Shantungs that I purchased, are probably not hand woven, the tangerine colored silk feels like it was made on not quite mechanized looms made with silk threads that were not particularly closely inspected for uniformity. It looks a wh...

I like productive days. Yesterday I sewed the pinot , corner pieces onto Sara-Beth's tallit . I also sewed the eyelets by hand, ( I love the way they look). In addition, I did the lettering for the a tara /neckband. The text that Sara-Beth chosefor her atara is a wonderful one. It comes from one of the Psalms we recite every morning, "(God) counts all of the stars and calls them all by name". I like that every morning I get to re-think the work on this tallit as I chant those verses. I also love how each element in this tallit , the tallit itself, the corner pieces and the atara all reflect the verse. They aren't identical but they all work well together, ( kind of like my kids). The atara is made out of a black tussah silk. It's got a heavy horizontal weft and the fibers themselves have the slightly rough texture of a raw silk. It's a subtle but nice contrast to the slubby rough textured even weave of the rest of the tallit . Sara-Beth, I think, had expec...

The text for this atara/neckband comes from the biblical story of Samuel. The boy, Samuel, is called by God in the night. Samuel thinks he is being called by his mentor, rushes to him and says " (Here I am) because you called me". I wrote the text out with ink on cardstock using a square tipped paint brush. I then cut the letters out using an X-acto knife. I used the cards with the cut out letters as a stencil. the color was shiva paintstick applied with a stiff stencil brush. I'm loving the wide letters. The actual color of the silk is a deeper maroon. I had already stencilled the Florentine grille design. I love how using the stencil results in such risp lettering.

My friend Tamar was celebrating her birthday today with a get together of several women friends for lunch. I debated a bit about what would be a good gift for Tamar and finally decided on a scarf. Tamar is one of those women who is not a red head, has the coloring of one. The slightly off colors that look terrific on redheads look great on Tamar. So when I found this strip of not quite sea foam green shantung, I knew it was exactly the right color for Tamar. The scarf needed a bit of embellishment. I cut a stamp out of a dollar store plastic eraser. I poured a bit of bronze and some blue fabric dye onto a paper plate and got to work. I stamped three rows of design up and down the scarf. After setting the color with my iron, I serged the fabric into a tube , turned it right side out and then top stitched the result. I have lots of beads left over from the Torah mantle and decided to try to add a beaded fringe. this was a first for me. I did two different beading patterns, one on eac...

While pieces of the design process take place before I even put my hand to fabric, there are always improvements that take place as I work. Often, work on one piece gives me ideas that I then apply to a different piece. I have been playing with stencils lately. My son's tallit has those naturalistic looking green willow leaves. Elisa's tallit has that ornate Florentine architectural stencil in gold. As looked at Sara's tallit , I realized that it looked a bit dour. It needed a bit more of-- something. The something came by way of stencil. I cut a stencil out of an index card and applied gold colored oil paint stick through the stencil. In each case, while the technique may be identical, but the look is not at all the same ( or even similar) . I particularly like how in Sara's tallit the colors of the tallit , very mid-century colors, influenced the modern look of the stencil. I also found it fascinating to see how the same paint stick applied to the red/ maroon...

About a year before my daughter's bat-mitzvah, SSS sample sale, a terrific clothing loft in the garment district wad a huge sale. I bought a black suit with tuxedo like details made out of black stretch wool. it looked terrific and cost nearly nothing. I wore it to her bat - mitzvah. Before my older son's bar mitzvah, I had bought several black and white striped silks. I thought I would make myself a pieced dress with the stripes going in every direction. Since I taught my son, made his tallit, made his tallit bag and invitation and did the flowers.. I sort of ran out of team and never did make that dress. Instead I wore a great 1940's inspired wrap dress by Zelda that gives me-- even post three kids -- a wasp waist. Now that bar mitzvah #3 is around the corner I have dress visions dancing in my head. I regularly check out the vintage clothing sites. I also have a large collection of vintage sewing books. One concept that I have seen in dresses from the 1920's on is a s...

This tallit is being made for a bat mitzvah girl who shares my name. The tallit will be made out of the pictured fabrics, a chocolate brown silk noil and a pink shantung. Sarah loves these colors. With the exception of the colors, this tallit will look far more like a traditional tallit than say Sara Xing's . I ordered the brown silk from the nice folks at Thai Silks. Finding a chocolate brown silk is harder than one would think. I have been buying from the folks at Thai Silks for years. Normally, I might have just ordered the fabric over the internet . But because I needed such a specific shade, I called up and had the person who took my order help me. I wanted a Hershey Bar brown, not a greenish brown, not a yellow brown but Hershey Bar brown. Rosi at Thai compared fabrics for me and sent me just the right color. I was so relieved when I opened the package. When I met with Sarah, we talked about texts that she loves. One of the verses that means a great deal to her comes...

I know, I posted the pictorial panels yesterday. I had thought that they were done and just needed to be bordered in the luscious heavy black silk. I was wrong. This is also why work always takes me longer than I expect. I end up making unplanned for improvements along the way. The pieces take longer-- and it is so worth it. First of all, baby Moses needed simple facial features. The fastest way to add those was via Shiva Paint Stick and a stencil. The little round mouth stencil was courtesy of a hole punched with a standard hole puncher. The eyes, Exacto knifed out of the same piece of paper. Voila... Moses has a cute baby face. Then I noticed that I hadn't covered the outer edges of the panel in fabric . So I cut watery shapes out of shantung scraps. My clever buddies at the Creative Machine list taught me the brilliant trick of using a glue stick to hold down fabric for applique. No, you don't need to use a fancy made for fabric only glue stick available at a premium. R...

This is the "Burning Bush" side of Sara Xing's tallit. Sara wanted the basket and the bush made out of the same fabrics. I pushed her idea further by being sure to repeat many of the same fabrics in both images. Most of the leaves are made out of silk shantung. Some are made out of Chinese brocade, a nod towards Sara Xing's birth heritage and some out of a great stong red linen. The base of the tallit is a 40 momme black silk charmeuse. If you have never experienced 40 momme silk this is what it is like. China silk is the equivalent of skim milk. A 19 momme silk is pretty wonderful and is like heavy cream. The 40 momme silk is like sour cream. I spent most of yesterday cutting it. You need to use the pull a thread and cut method. A little hard to see where to cut on black. So the going was slow.I am a little terrfied of sewing it but I will just have to plunge in. The "pictures" have to be framed in the black silk and then I will construct the body of the ta...