Fartayched und fabessered

During the golden age of Yiddish theater one of the posters advertising the production of a Shakespeare play in Yiddish proclaimed that this production of Hamlet or Macbeth was

Fartayched und fabessered  that is translated and improved.

That term Fartayched und fabessered is often used as the Yiddish equivalent more or less of gilding the lily.

All of this is a round about way of saying that the kittle I had made last year has now been tailored to fit the intended wearer.

My boys' special ed teachers used to describe the things they were terrible at as "developing skills". My men's wear tailoring is a foreign language to me. I took in the side seams of the kittle and added two long waist darts at the sides.  One of my sewing buddies on one of my sewing discussion groups is a custom shirt maker. She has often spoken about darting men's shirts. I placed the darts fairly close to the side seams so they wouldn't show from the front and still give shape to the kittle.

I had put two pleats in the back of the kittle, so I thought that putting the darts in the back would just be silly.

Last year when I made the kittle I also made a simple belt to go with it. It's bias cut tube of cotton with an additional layer of cotton inside.  It was OK but the owner of the kittle wanted something a bit closer to a traditional Chassidic gartle.

A gartle is a belt worn in the Chassidic world by men to separate the more lofty upper part of the body from the baser lower half of the body. Often they are woven black sashes.

The kittle owner showed me some photos of Chassidic Rebbes wearing more elaborate embellished gartles. The flash wasn't to his taste but he did want something that looked rich.

I took a length of three inch wide ribbon and cut it to size. I then topped the ribbon with white gros-grain ribbon and stitched it into place with decorative stitches.

The two sides of the gartle are variatons on the same theme.

I love the way it looks.

To my eye it just looks right.

I was delighted to have the opportunity to re-visit a piece I had put so much time into, and glad that I got the opportunity to Fartayche und fabesser  it.