Sunday, January 12, 2014

"Something Blue" Chuppah

     It wouldn't be a chuppah adventure without some unanticipated twists and turns, and so it was with my Something Blue Chuppah, which I created in time for the Boulder Jewish Festival. Inspired by a Marge Piercy poem and some beautiful silk fabric, it features an original design of a mini tulle- and floral-adorned chuppah among the poetry.
    The original design was actually quite different; I'd envisioned waves of text flowing horizontally across the chuppah, when I realized that I could have the words under the chuppah, literally. Then, another bump in the road--I found that I needed more blue silk and went to the store. When I brought the fabric home, I realized that the grain of the dupioni silk ran in a different direction than I had thought. So a little brainstorming was required to enlarge the blue background in as subtle a way as possible.
     The purple silk dupioni lettering has been hand cut, fused, and machine appliqued onto the light blue batik background fabric.
     Here are some images of the chuppah as it progressed...

Step 1: I made the white chuppah from silk and fused it to the background.


Step 2: Then I added tulle...


...and after a lot of fussing, hand stitched it down.


Step 3: The finishing touch--a delicate vine with rosebuds made using batik fabric. I loved it!



What's next? I'm planning on an etsy shop but couldn't decide if it should sell chuppahs only, or be more of an 'umbrella' for other judaica/additional creations. I think it will be the latter and will keep you posted.

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