Elettaria

For those who don't know, I've been busy over the last few weeks creating a tallit, or Jewish prayer shawl. About half the women in my community (a Liberal one) wear them, but it's a relatively new thing for women. It was completed last week, and it had its inaugural wearing at the Shabbat morning service on Saturday, where I said a shechechiyanu for the occasion (and where it was duly admired, naturally). It's linen embroidered with cotton, and isn't usually so rumpled-looking but I've been throwing it about while I got the measurements right for the tallit bag. I spent about two and a half weeks solidly working on it, frequently for a very large part of the day (work avoidance). Embroidery is definitely therapeutic, although my eyes may not think so. The text across the top is the blessing you say when putting on a tallit, and the names on the corners are the names of the four matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, which there is a tradition of putting on women's tallitot.

The tallit bag isn't quite finished, I need to get my mother to tell me the secrets of putting in a concealed zip, but that's all that's left. You can't quite see the colours on it, but it's navy velvet embroidered in various shades of light blue shading to off-white and some silver.

Enormous thanks to elfbystarlight, who has been my advisor throughout the project and put up with late-night phonecalls when I'm yelping, "What do I do, it's shrunk?"

( And that's a POMEGRANATE on Leah's corner )

I'm now turning into the community embroiderer, and will hopefully be creating a cover for the torah scroll, as well as cloths to put above and beneath it in lieu of an ark. I'm still working out basic designs at the moment, but all suggestions and comments are welcome.

cross-posted to faith_feminists and chroniccrafters

I'm thinking of making myself a tallit [Jewish prayer shawl]. For further details on what that is, together with a very insane conversation with my mother on the subject, plus an erudite discussion of the way religious garments get gendered (which side-tracked into subjects such as how hot some men look in eyeliner), look at my post last night in faith_feminists.

The short version is that being vegan, almost all conventional talitot are out for me since they are usually made with wool and/or silk, I've only seen one set of pure cotton ones and they cost a bomb, and I don't like the acrylic ones (shiny and with silver or gold in it is not my style), though you never know, I might see something suitable in Jerusalem next month. So I'm messing around at home with scraps practising applique and contemplating embroidery, and keeping an eye open for scarves which could be made into talitot. What do you think of this one? The one thing I'm not sure about is if the fabric turns out to be shiny, and for some reason the seller keeps ignoring me when I ask that (though she's answered other questions). I've never encountered polished cotton, does anyone know what it's like? The size is pretty standard for a tallit, the fringes look appropriate, the colour's right, I'd prefer cotton for the sake of coolness anyway, and she says that it's about the same weight as her husband's tallit.