Torah Stitch by Stitch

Torah stitch by stitch is a cross stitch project conceived by Temma Gentles. She suggests that is for those who are interested in engaging with the words and spirit of the Torah with purpose and rigour.  Her goal is to produce the entire text, with the help of volunteer stitchers from around the world.

My portion is an excerpt from Exodus and so I created an illustration that I hoped would appear to reference those who had left Egypt and were now walking through the desert.  

My husband suggests that they are not so much trudging through the hot desert as dancing.  This works for me too.

It was a great pleasure to participate in this project.  I love the largeness of the goal!! To reproduce the entire Torah!! and see it all in stitches, the notion is truly awesome.  I did find that reproducing the letters exactly was very rigourous, but in a positive way.  And then having the space to create my own illustration was so creatively challenging.  I haven't worked in counted cross stitch since I was a child and learnt how to do it from my grandmother.  This brought back those memories in a very lovely way.