Torah Cover Repairs

Almost 10 years ago, I had the privilege of working with a few artists at Kehilat Hadar to create a Torah cover for their second Torah scroll. We worked together to design a piece that represents Hadar’s community and mission and then I made the Torah cover from that design. Now, it’s had years of use and some of the elements needed a little attention.

The most obvious issue was the banner of text that was fraying and pulling away from the cover. Since the fabric was originally the exact size it needed to be, the banner had to be replaced. I took a picture of it and printed it out the exact size of the cover. Then I placed a new sheer fabric over the paper and painted the text on the new sheer fabric.

The new painted piece over the old image is below.

Next, I cut it out with plenty of room around and ironed stabilizer to the back the exact size of the finished banner. The stabilizer will make sure it doesn’t fray again! Then I carefully removed the old banner, folded the extra fabric behind the stabilizer, and hand stitched the new banner in place.

Once the new banner was in place, I turned to the other frayed elements – the green silk hills. For these, I carefully took the stitching out, turned the fabric under, and hand stitched it in place.

Next, I reinforced some of the trees with hand stitching, just in case they wanted to fray. Now the Torah cover is ready to go back to NYC!