This story about the prayer shawl for Max will be in the MOA, Volume 34, Issue 3, November, 2005.

Max’s Tallis

by Sylvia Fitzgerald

Claire Andrasko has been a very active member of the Guild for many years. Over the years she has taken wonderful trips and shared her experiences with the Guild through programs and workshops. Last year she was vice president in charge of programs and did a great job. Claire had a goal of weaving a tallis [prayer shawl] for each of her two grandsons. On a trip to study weaving in Laos she wove the first tallis and brought back the remaining silk warp to finish weaving here.

Sadly she was diagnosed with cancer and had to return to Canada to be with her children and was unable to weave the second tallis. In the move to Canada the warp got all tangled up. Imagine a silk warp 32” wide set at 30 epi and about 6’ long wadded up by movers who had no idea what it was.

Over the summer Claire’s daughter, Shelley, kept in touch with several of the Guild members by e-mail to let us know how Claire was doing. Shelley mentioned that she was trying to untangle the warp and had no luck finding local weavers who were willing to help with the weaving. Being in need of a good project to keep me inside my cool house for the summer, I suggested that Shelley send the warp back to Phoenix and I could untangle it and surely the Guild members would help me weave up the second tallis. Claire and her family were so glad to take me up on that offer they shipped it right back to Phoenix.

Bernie was on the e-mail list and was willing to help out. Bernie dug out an old Handwoven article about religious weaving to give her ideas about patterns to use. Claire’s good friends, Sybil Yastrow and Esther Federman offered their encouragement and technical advice on the religious aspects. Together Bernie and I opened the box and were horrified at the mess inside.

My heart sank: what had I gotten us into?!

We spread out the mess on my large dinner table and gradually sorted out what was silk warp and what was heddles. The silk warp was threaded through a bamboo reed and 3 bamboo harnesses with white string heddles that were almost the same color as the silk. We realized that my loom was too narrow to weave the 32” width necessary, so Bernie said she would weave it on her loom. We also realized there was no way to put the warp in the existing reed on Bernie’s loom.

The solution was to pull each warp individually and wind them up to be used as weft on a new warp. So I pulled silk warps and wound them onto a paper towel tube for Bernie to use in the weaving. Bernie warped up her loom with white jaggerspun donated by Sybil. Bernie was able to use Claire’s silk as the weft to weave a collar that is attached to the tallis, the hat and a carrying case. For the body of the tallis, the silk did not seem to be working well, so she used tencel for the weft. Bernie is such a fast weaver and used to weaving with fine thread. I am in awe of her warping up a 32” warp set at 20 epi and weaving off the 6’ tallis, hat, and carrying case in a matter of days.

It has been an amazing experience for all of us in many ways. Claire and her family are so grateful and Bernie and I are glad to have been able to give Claire some comfort that the second tallis is woven. The tallis has arrived in Montreal. Claire is delighted with it and the young man has sent a nice thank you note. Shelley promises to keep in touch and send a picture of Max’s Bar Mitzvah in November wearing the tallis that contains parts of his grandmother’s silk, and lots of caring from her friends in Arizona.