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Showing posts with the label tallit bag

blogging while ill

 I haven't been posting because I have been sick.   Here I am staying warm. I am still not sure if this is food poisoning or some sort of s stomach bug. The only remotely good thing about this is that I have lost some weight. It would have been nicer to achieve the same result by going to a luxurious spa. Last night I stupidly chose to eat an exciting supper---some chicken soup with big chunks of vegetables. It's back to plain rice and white potatoes for me...what could I have been thinking? Anyway, I couldn't have Miles and his family come by on Sunday as planned to tie the tzitzit so i tied them on my own. I also made Miles a tallit bag.  I used this heavy upholstery weight striped denim in my stash. It wears like iron. I had made myself a skirt out of some of it a few years ago and know that this will wear like iron. Ihe decorative panel is made out more the woven ribbon panel that I had made for the pinot/ corner pieces. I edged it in more of the gold and blue st...

Revisiting a Piece

I have been at this work of making Judiaca in fabric for not quite thirty years. Because fabric is inherently fragile, in the past little while I have been asked to repair some pieces that I had worked on a long time ago. This past Shabbat my friend Doris asked me if I would take a look at the tallit bag I had made for her husband about twenty years ago and if I would remove the atara I had made ( I think) at the same time so the tallit could be cleaned. The text comes from the haftara that was recited during Ken and Doris's Aufruf.  It comes from Isiah 54:10 כִּ֤י הֶֽהָרִים֙ יָמ֔וּשׁוּ וְהַגְּבָע֖וֹת תְּמוּטֶ֑נָה וְחַסְדִּ֞י מֵאִתֵּ֣ךְ לֹֽא־יָמ֗וּשׁ וּבְרִ֤ית שְׁלוֹמִי֙ לֹ֣א תָמ֔וּט אָמַ֥ר מְרַחֲמֵ֖ךְ יְהוָֽה׃ (ס) For the mountains may move And the hills be shaken, But my loyalty shall never move from you, Nor My covenant of friendship be shaken —said the LORD, who takes you back in love. I just used the first phrase of the verse. I built the hills out of a ...

It's Done!!

At long last, the tallit is complete. I had made a beautiful atara (neckband), only to realize that it was just too wide for the narrow tallit. My husband wisely suggested that I use it as the decorative element on the bag. My dear friend Welmoed had given me a length of red silk curtain from her drapery workshop a few years ago. It was the perfect color for the bag. The lovely work Welmoed had done to line and interline the curtain provided exactly the right amount of structure for the bag. I lined the bag with red linen and calligraphed the bat-mitzvah girl's name  in Hebrew and English- here scribbled out for her privacy. Below you see the tallit inside the bag. I made a new atara. Below you see the mitered corners of the embroidered ribbon. Mitering used to be a task I did really badly. I love how the machine embroidery evokes the look of of old hand embroidery from any number of cultures. You can see what the ribbon looked like before I embro...

Done!!

At long last, this bag is done. Frankly, I couldn't be happier. So much thought went into each and every detail.  The button my client had provided was beautiful, but not exactly the right color. You can see the original below. I altered the button color using my secret methods and the color works much better now. The purple velvet loop is made out of a bit of the first velvet I had ever purchased.  It's a silk/rayon mix. The loft I had purchased it from in the garment district is long gone.  The rest of the velvet has been used in little slivers in dozens of pieces I have made over the years.   The inside of the loop is threaded with elastic. The plant store down the street has begun putting out spring flowers. If we had enough light in the apartment I would have brought some home. Alas, I will just have to enjoy these blooms on the street. The gardening gloves sold a couple of blocks awa...

The truth of what we actually see

My childhood friend Rachely has a new phone with a camera and has been posting beautiful nature photos mostly from her neighborhood on Facebook. Her lovely photos have sparked a conversation between Rachely and her friends  about honesty and photo editing. I have been using a digital camera for a long time now. One of my frustrations with a digital camera, actually with cameras, in general, is that they don't always capture what your eye is seeing. I might be drawn to take a photo because of a particularly beautiful quality of light. Once I take the photo the quality that drew my eye, might be missing in the photo. I feel that this is an honest use of photo editing. With the magic of photo editing, I can show what it was that my eye actually saw. I have also discovered over time that while digital cameras are wonderful, they have fairly limited digital brains. I bump up to the limited abilities of my digital camera when photographing some of my work. ...