Out of my wheelhouse

Ella goes to my shul. She is a terrific sensible and funny kid. I made her tallit for her bat-mitzvah, and when she was younger I repaired her beloved stuffed bunny.

Amazon.com Widgets

Ella is graduating from high school in a few weeks. She is going to two proms and is attending a family wedding. Ella fell in love with a dress on Etsy. The seller asked that the buyers send their measurements in because the dress would be made to measure. Ella asked me to help her take her measurements. I did.

The dress Ella wanted came in a rose print on ivory chiffon. It was no longer available. Ella chose a celadon green instead.

A few weeks later, the dress arrived. Ella's mom got in touch with me. She asked me if I could make the dress work.

The color wasn't celadon, but more of a dreary grey. I have seen exactly that color of grey on the faces of people with terminal cancer. The color was depressing and the fit was really off. The neckline stood far away from Ella's body showing much too much skin and looking dowdy at the same time

My first task was to play with the fit of the bodice. My alteration skills are what my son's special ed teachers used to describe as "developing". I hid gathers that pulled the bodice towards the body.

Once I had improved the fit, we then had to address the unfortunate color. Ella and I discussed sever possible options. She loved the idea of adding faceted glass beads in bronze to the neckline. I thought that a bit of a darker color close to Ella's skin would help matters a great deal.

I put Ella to work stringing the beads and then I sewed the beads to the neckline. Once that task was complete the dress was less bleak but still to depressed to wear to a prom.

Ella came over this afternoon for our next work session.

She loved the idea of hot-melt crystals. We attached a bunch, but then Ella asked if we could also use the teeny gold sequins she had seen in my stash. All of the bits of glimmer helped a whole lot.

One thing that really bothered me about the dress was that the waistband was just a little too skimpy and out of proportion. I MacIvered a gold sash out of some pleated gold fabric. Ella had been lobbying for a ruffle so more of the gold fabric was turned into a ruffle.

Ella needed a big blingy necklace to wear with the dress and I had just the thing.

Weirdly all of the bling that we added and the necklace seem to make the dress read as greenish rather than just death grey.

Yes, the dress does need to be professionally pressed. But it is better, lots better than it was. The dress looks particularly beautiful in low light when the crystals and the sequins bounce the light back to the viewer.

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

sarah in nyc

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