Pinstripes!

Yankees or SF Seals pinstripe tallit.

Pinstripes on a tallit? This is a new style for my line of sports team tallitot: Not just team colors, but an actual pinstripe athletic jersey fabric used as the base fabric for the tallit. I made this one for a San Francisco Seals fan, and I now have an order for the same tallit for a NY Yankees fan.

I have created a separate page to show how a sports fan can wear his loyalties to the synagogue. Check it out.

Camp Tallit

Time to schedule for summer camps! One thing moms don't like to do is pack a child's beautiful Bar or Bat Mitzvah tallit to camp where it will be subject to rough wear and a lot of dust. Solution? A washable cotton print fabric that is pretty, yet sturdy. I made this one out of a remnant piece I found in my fabric store, and the price of the fabric and the simple construction kept the price of the tallit very reasonable.

On a budget?

Want to have a nice tallit for a Bar/Bat Mitzvah but want to watch your budget? There are ways to tweak a design to fit different price ranges. Here is an example. A customer really liked my navy and wedgewood blue tallit on white dupioni silk but asked if I could customize it to bring the price down. I had a remnant piece of white silk noil that I could make into a 15 1/2 inch tallit, instead of my usual 18-20 inches. For the atarah, I embroidered just the last two words of the tallit blessing -- Lehit'atef batzitzit. For the bag, I made a simple foldover bag instead of a zippered one. This worked out well for everybody: I was able to use my remnant, and my customer got a tallit that she likes at a price that she felt comfortable with.

20-inch wide tallit with the full tallit blessing.

15 1/2 inch tallit with short embroidery.

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This tallit ended up having quite a story. The family traveled to Croatia to celebrate their simcha in an old synagogue, actually more of a museum since most of the Jews were killed or moved after WWII. There hasn't been a life cycle event in that building since WWII. The mother just sent me a picture and said: "Your tallit covered our son in the first Bar Mitzvah at that synagogue since 1939. The Torah hadn't been opened in thirty years, and most of the remaining twenty-five members of the synagogue had never seen the inside of their Torah. It was all we hoped it would be."