sarah in nyc

I was ready to begin work on Mimi's tallit. I ordered the blue silk we had chosen.  A few days later I got an email from the supplier. They were out of stock and wouldn’t get more of the silk for at least a month.   I needed the silk. It was past time to get to work. I  Looked for the right shade of blue charmeuse on line and found it for $30/yard.  That’s awfully steep. I found a color that was the right tone, but almost-not quite the right color…it was lavender, rather than blue. I also found just the right color, but it was the end of the bolt, and the yardage was short.   My selection of fabric felt very Goldilocks…nothing was just right. I asked Mimi to come by , to see if we could hammer out a solution together. We looked at the fabrics and then both of us , at the same moment, came up with the idea of using all three colors.   We both thought that long irregular triangles of the three very close colors would look beautiful. I then m...

Rachel’s grandparents joined our synagogue about ten years ago as empty nesters. They are truly dear people who have really added a great deal to our community. They asked me to make a tallit for their granddaughter Rachel. Rachel is a spunky sprite of a kid who owns a company making video photomontages for events. Rachel is a kid who goes to Jewish day school and clearly has paid attention in school. Running through the texts was just easy . She’s opinionated- a character that I like a whole lot in a kid. When one’s client is a twelve year old  there is often what I think of as the Malibu Barbie moment. A thematic or color whim, suddenly becomes really important for the client. My job is to direct that Malibu Barbie moment so the tallit will work for my client not just at age twelve but also as they  wear the tallit ten or more years after the bat-mitzvah. Rachel had two such desires. one was for the base color to be brown, because she at the moment is loving blue a...