Home blessing in antique quilling style

This time I'm going to show a quilled picture I created for my parents as a "housewarming" present. They moved to a new apartment, so I thought a home blessing would be appropriate in this case. I must say that I love antique quilling and decided to try to mimic its unique style in this project. I searched the Internet for photos of antique quilling, saw tons of examples, drew a few sketches, and only then set to work.

I cut 1/8"-wide (3 mm) strips of maroon (or is it burgundy?) paper by hand and colored their edge using a gold marker. All in all, about two A4 sheets of paper were needed for this project.

The text in Hebrew I cut out on an oval piece of card stock painted with gold. Then I glued a piece of the maroon paper used for the strips to the reverse side of the cutout, so that the maroon can be seen through the cutting and give the letters this particular color. The lettering was placed in the center, and embellished around with a quilled ornament.

For the embellishment I used some of the most basic quilling shapes like the tight coil, "eye", "teardrop", "crescent" and "scrolled heart". I also used crimped strips, which I made with my homemade crimper. The ornament includes pomegranates as its major element, and it is not by mere chance.

The pomegranate plays a special role in the Jewish tradition. It is mentioned among The Seven Species and has a symbolic meaning in Judaism, as its believed number of seeds corresponds with the 613 commandments of the Torah. And even if there are some deviations in their number, it always remains very close to 613. It's also a symbol of fruitfulness, pomegranates adorned the Temple, and so on. And of course, its shape is just beautiful, that's why I wanted to feature it in this work of mine.

And finally, a few words about the other elements of the picture. For the background I used a very pale brown (beige) pastel paper. The frame measures 7 x 9 1/2 inches (18 x 24 cm), its depth is about 1/4" (6 mm). The color matches perfectly the quilling, and also the interior of the new apartment.