The talisman project is back on the front burner

One of the nice things about Passover, is that once it has started, I’m pretty much done cooking for the week. I always make enough food for our home seder so that if we have surprise guests I am prepared. And we did have surprise guests, but not the army that I always prepare for. (only 3 starving college students).

So when a voice silently thundered in my head last night (imagine it, if you’ve never experienced such a thing), that, with the Sun in Taurus, and the Moon waning, it was time to start work, I knew that I would. I want to have it fully constructed by Monday, May 5th, when the Sun, the New Moon and Venus are all in Taurus.

The first difficulty that I ran into (once I had all my supplies-but I’ve been collecting them for months) was in cutting the fabric for the main shape. One side is copper silk charmeuse, the other side green silk velvet. I pinned the fabrics together and pinned the pattern to them (an 8 petal rosette), but charmeuse and velvet stretch and handle very differently-it took 2 tries to actually cut the fabric correctly so that the sides match.

The next difficulty was the star. I couldn't find a 7 pointed star of the right dimensions, so I had to learn to draw one. Yes, I know there is probably some way to do it on the computer, I used a protractor, compass and ruler. Remarkably, that only took 3 tries before I got it right. The original idea was to embroider the star onto the fabric, green silk thread on the copper fabric and copper thread on the green. But I’ve done big embroidery projects with metal thread, and the amount of cleansing and banishing that I would have to do when I was done with the copper metal thread would really put me off schedule. So, instead, I will make stars from the fabric and use the thread to sew the green star to the copper fabric and the copper star to the green. I will save the embroidery for the small space in the center of the stars.

Once the individual sides are assembled and embroidered, I will sew the two sides together, leaving enough room for the rose petals and other things that will be enclosed. Once everything is collected and in, I will sew up the final seam.

I know that the beauty of the talisman is not the main point, but I have high hopes for the appearance of this project, and it seems to me that something like this should be luxurious and attractive. As soon as I finish the fabric cutting stage, I will take some pictures.