The making of a hand painted silk tallis

I gather all the supplies first:

Here you see the premixed dye in various shades, brushes, butterfly cutouts, brushes a spray bottle full of water, a small hammer and stainless steel pushpins (that won't rust when wet).

I used "Setasilk" for this particular tallit. It is ultraviolet light-sensitive so that areas that are covered do not develop and remain white. It requires a perfect combination of weather... Very Sunny and no breeze, or the pieces blow away.

The silk is 100% silk de chine which I order pre-hemmed. I cut the two ends off and sew a double row of stitching for the fringe (one of the last steps)

In the pictures above I have it stretched on an scrap wood with plastic garbage bags underneath.

I wet the fabric with the spray bottle and then squirt the colors all over the silk. I then lay out all the paper pieces and some ferns and grasses from my garden. Then I wait and pray that there won't be a breeze until the fabric is dry! (I'm certain there is a prayer for not letting paper pieces blow away in the wind... )

When all goes well, It comes out something like this:

The pink areas are where the ink ran from the printouts. This came off when I washed the fabric. I iron the fabric to set the ink, then I wash it in special detergent that stops the dye from running. This is the only time you will EVER see me iron anything! lol.

Now comes the fun part, coloring it all in.

and the not so fun part... lessons learned:

The dye ran when I painted the lines. Note to self: From now on use "resist" between the lines to prevent this from happening again.

The tallis shown here is now a subdued teal... I had to redeem it somehow.

So it was back to the drawing board... for this:

Below is a close-up of the tallis hanging in front of the window, the paler butterflies are from the back of the silk showing through, it makes a nice effect, I think.

The tsitsit were tied according to several videos I found on U-Tube... you can find anything on U-Tube, lol!

In typical Jewish fashion, there were about 10 different answers to the one question: "How do you tie kosher tsitsit?"

Some videos said you should say the prayer for tying tsitsit while inserting the strings through the tallis. Others said you should say the prayer with each knot tied.

I do both, just to be safe... super-kosher tsitsit tying lol... and of course, after saying it over 44 times in the process, I now know the prayer by heart!

L'sheim mitzvat tsitsit!