"Rainbow Over Ararat" adapted for tallit-like garment

It's raining, so this feels like a great post to put up today.

Last spring I created a Noah's Ark papercut titled "Rainbow Over Ararat" as a donation for the annual Temple Ahavat Shalom Early Childhood Education Center (ECEC) fundraising luncheon.

I was contacted a short while ago by some folks at St Thomas' Church, Stockton Heath, in the United Kingdom. They were welcoming a new curate with a stole for her to wear, and wanted to make something with Noah's Ark as a theme. Joanne Ridley, the seamstress-artist, asked if she could use my papercut as a basis for the design. She offered to make a donation to the ECEC, and I said "go for it," and she's just finished it. That's the new curate, Lore Chumbley, wearing it in the photo above.

(The church TOTALLY looks like the Platonic ideal of an "old English church" and is, apparently, of historical interest.)

Here's what Joanne said about the process of making the stole:

Briefly, I tacked all the fabrics onto a foundation of muslin, then covered each "join" with a very narrow strip of white bias binding to replicate the papercut. I layered this up like a quilt and quilted through everything to hold it all in place then I (heart in mouth) cut it into the two pieces needed for the stole, sewed those together at the back neck edge and finally bound the edge with blue fabric to match the sky.  I did extend the waves downwards to make the balance right for the stole's length.

I think it's a beautiful adaptation of my work, and I'm so proud they wanted to use it. Here are some photos taken while the stole was being made, and one of the original papercut.