sarah in nyc

and this is what is in my fridge. There are only four of us at home. This is a whole lot of food to get through before clearing out for Passover. Do you want any taboule? or some lentil salad? or humus? Perhaps some bread?

We fed lots of people. Our son did a wonderful job. The dress worked So did the boots There were no fights No one went hungry There were no disasters Everyone went home We have lots of food in our fridge and freezer I'm really, really tired

My friend Cindy Ann left a comment on yesterday's entry. She wanted to know how I came up with the idea for the dress that I'm wearing at my son's Bar Mitzvah. Probably the earliest source came from my years playing with Barbie. When my sisters and I used to get tired of the garments we owned that actually came with Barbie, we used to improvise dresses from tissues. ( We loved when our mother bought boxes of colored tissues which made for much more glamorous dresses than plain white) I remember cutting little holes for Barbie's arms so those dresses wrapped around her body. We usually tied them with hair ribbons or with a lace hankie . The second source for this dress is the diagrams for Miyake clothing that I found on the Vogue Patterns website. I love looking at the schematics of clothing patterns so I can understand how the garments are actually constructed. I remember being shocked at how simple the actual pattern was for a really complicated looking drapey coat. Tw...

During my daughter's winter break from college, I dragged her to the Museum of the City of New York to see an exhibit on Art Deco in New York. It was a sweet little exhibit. But inexplicably, in the middle of the exhibit was a selection of 1940's and '50's dresses. They were beautiful, but not Art Deco. One of the dresses in the exhibit was by the designer Valentina, a girlfriend of Greta Garbo . The dress was a mind blowingly simple white dirndl dress made out of wool gauze. I especially loved the deep ( maybe 18 inch) doubled hem. I l oved how pared down the dress was. I also loved how it looked entirely contemporary, even though it was about 60 years old. A few days later I found some wool gauze in black at Paron . I thought that it would be wonderful to make myself a wool gauze over dress to wear over a full slip. I thought that it would be a nice thing to wear at my son's Bar Mitzvah. My friend Jackie had gone to Vietnam over the summer and I asked he...

When it was time for my daughter to study for her Bat Mitzvah we hired a teacher to work with her. Either my husband or I could have taught her, but given where she was emotionally at the time, it seemed better to have her learn with someone else. When it was time for my older son to begin to study, I started to work with him with the assurance that if he wanted to work with someone who was not his mother, we would find him a teacher. We worked in little snippets of time early in the mornings. I don't think we could have found a teacher to show up for ten minutes at a time, at 7:00am. We worked well together. We have a fairly easy relationship.r When our youngest was 10 or so, my husband went to a charity auction. One of the items in the silent auction was Bar Mitzvah lessons with Jerry. Jerry runs an alternative Hebrew School and has prepared hundreds and hundreds of kids for their B'nai Mitzvah. my husband bid on the lessons and won. Jerry was one of the people that helped...

This morning was my son's "real" or weekday bar mitzvah. ( Not that the one that will be taking place this Shabbat ISN'T real --just that the more intimate setting of morning services feels like a much lower octane easier to focus on event ) My husband, son and I went to services together. As we got there, our friend Meyer was there with his video camera, ready to catch the images of us walking into the chapel. The day after our son was born, my parents came to help us out. My father went to morning services and invited Meyer to come to my son's Bris . Meyer took this invitation as a continuing obligation to my son. We have been so lucky that Meyer decided to take on this role in the life of my son and our family. Everyone should have a relative like Meyer. We aren't related by blood, but my father's off hand invitation has created that lovely relationship. My husband helped my son put on his t'fillin . Yes, I teared up hearing them both reciting ...

When I work on several pieces at a time, there is often a relationship between them that is not always immediately obvious to me. Over the last several months I have been working on the Torah Mantle in memory of my father and also on my son's tallit . A tallit needs a bag. Today I began work on the tallit bag. I don't like when things are, in the words of a very swish party planner that I met in a fabric store with his client, "too matchy matchy ". This tallit has all of those willow leaves on the stripes. I looked through one of my bag of scraps and found a piece left over from my father's mantle a rich deep blue cotton velveteen. I cut yet another leaf stencil out of an index card and brushed yellow and gold Shiva Pint stick through the stencil. (I did pay attention in kindergarten and remember the blue + yellow make green ). a detail of the stencil for the tallit bag I was very happy with the results.. You see just a detail here. And then I smacked myself ...

Last night, I finished making the eyelets for my son's tallit . Today he was home sick so we took advantagwe of the time together and we tied the tzitzit . He had a bit of trouble at the beginning getting the wraps right, but he worked really carefully and the results were beautiful. When he was done, we recited together the verses that yo say when you put on a tallit . he said the b'racha/blessing and then the Shehechiyanu. Seeing my youngest in his tallit, my father no longer alive to see the moment...Yup, I burst into sobs. You can see the corners of my son's mouth pulled a bit funny in that moment of high emotion. I hadn't expected quite that explosion of sobs. I don't think that he did either. And then the back view. The atara/neckband is still not completed. I still have a week. And I still need to make him a bag. Monday he reads from the Torah at morning services, and then again on Thursday.

The Chapel at Ansche Chesed I never expected to love going to morning minyan as much as I do. One of the things that makes me enjoy going to morning services is simply the richness of the texts that we recite each morning. Just having those wonderful words from Psalms coming out of my mouth is a pleasure. As you go through the service, fabulous images go whizzing by as if you are standing on a curb next to a highway with cars going at top speed. Each day, different words glimmer out at you. Another great pleasure of going to morning minyan is the other people in the room. it is quite a lovely community. Right now there are several people who are regulars who are really good at tending to the needs of others. Steve will notice if the person leading has a sore throat and could use a cup of water. Meyer made sure that Iris who has trouble holding her prayerbook has a lectern handy so she can rest her book on the lectern during the standing parts of the service. Randy and Michelle will...

Most of my work is sewing, but I do sometimes work on paper. I designed invitations for each of my children's B' nai Mitzvah. I had also designed some wedding invitations for friends.. Earlier this year I had my first paid invitation job and that, led to this invitation job. Yesterday I put this invitation to bed, so to speak. The invitation is a gate-fold, so the top image opens to reveal the inner image. I have not included the specific invitation text. The text comes from Jacob's wrestling with the angel. We chose this particular verse because it seems to epitome that Bar-Mitzvah moment of choosing adulthood. I have really loved working with Jacob's mom. She claims to be a control freak. I have found her not to be that at all, but someone who is really careful about details. She is very appreciative of the effort that I have put in and I have found her wonderful to work with. Her attention to detail has made my job so much easier. I love how this piece is a m...

I have begun piecing the "Old Shul tallit" and I'm pretty pleased with the results.The rough texture of the silk tussah contrasts wonderfully with the smoother shantung. The strong wine red looks terrific against the creamy white of the tussah. Right now the tallit looks like a bit of a mess, but it is most of the way done. I have one more red stripe left to piece and then a final stripe of white. After that I will work on the atara/neckband and the pinot/corners. Most pieces go through a stage just before their final stage when they look like a mess but are really nearly done. I have discovered that it is usually NOT a good idea to show a piece to most clients when it reaches that stage. It is hard for them to see past the mess. But this was not all I was working on. I also finished the edges of my son's tallit. Yes it does look lovely. I also painted the letters for his atara. And I did another stripe for Sara Jacobs' pink and brown tallit. I have also been ...

Most tallitot have stripes. Most of those stripes fall into one of several possible stripe patterns. You can see some examples that I had sketched out to give Elisa some ideas of the possibilities. I had already stencilled out the wide stripes, using a commercial architectural stencil. I needed to also do a couple of narrower stripes to work with the wide stencil. Today, at services my friend Jerry showed me the Megilla that had been illuminated as a gift for him by calligrapher Jay Greenspan. All of the decorative elements in the Megilla scroll were taken from our beautiful synagogue http://www.anschechesed.org/ and reproduced in miniature form. Here was the fabulous Moorish style stencils added to the bimah in the 1940's. There were the images from the stained glass windows in our beautiful chapel. When I got home I realized that I could create a smaller version of the lovely Florentine stencil I had used for the wider stripes. I then stencilled the narrower stripes with this si...

My sister had purchased a geranium pink Eileen Fisher linen blend v-necked sweater. It was a lovely sweater but not for my sister. It was too aggressively, cheerfully pink. The boxy shape was not flattering for my sister and the wide V of the neck just emphasised everything that was wrong with the sweater. My sister had loved the article I had written for www.patternreview.com about refashioning sweaters and gave me this sweater to work on. Her instructions were " Do whatever you want." Being given free reign is actually a hard thing. The first thing that I did was over -dye the sweater with a deep blue. The result calmed the sweater down to a deep mauve that would look much prettier against my sister's skin. I ten cut open the front of the sweater to turn it into a cardigan. Until that point, everything had gone swimmingly. I tried serging an edge with woolly nylon thread. The results were UG -LEE. I tried three or four different edgings , and all of them were f...

While pieces of the design process take place before I even put my hand to fabric, there are always improvements that take place as I work. Often, work on one piece gives me ideas that I then apply to a different piece. I have been playing with stencils lately. My son's tallit has those naturalistic looking green willow leaves. Elisa's tallit has that ornate Florentine architectural stencil in gold. As looked at Sara's tallit , I realized that it looked a bit dour. It needed a bit more of-- something. The something came by way of stencil. I cut a stencil out of an index card and applied gold colored oil paint stick through the stencil. In each case, while the technique may be identical, but the look is not at all the same ( or even similar) . I particularly like how in Sara's tallit the colors of the tallit , very mid-century colors, influenced the modern look of the stencil. I also found it fascinating to see how the same paint stick applied to the red/ maroon...

My student emailed me before her lesson. Purim ( the Jewish equivalent of Mardi Gras ) is next week. She wanted to dress up as Little Red Riding hood . Could I help her make a cape? Making costumes is a blast, so of course I said yes. And putting on my sewing instructor hat, I figured that some new skills could be taught here as well. My student had attempted to go fabric shopping in the neighborhood, but alas the fabric store was closed. I had some red light weight polar fleece in my stash, all that was left from the mountain of remnants I had purchased from Malden Mills six or seven years ago. I don't exaggerate THAT much when I call it a mountain of polar fleece. I think I paid $25 for the fleece and another $25 to ship it. It arrived by mail in a massive plastic bag that was taller than my youngest son. Some of the fleece ended up as coats. Some I sold at cost to some of my sewing pals. Most of it ended up being used, as is ,as blankets. My student drew a quick sketc...

This morning I ironed another batch of table cloths. They are from top to bottom, a vintage (I think 1960's) cotton Indian and block print purchased at B.Altman's. It belonged to my friend Alan's mother. I got it when they closed up his mother's apartment a few years ago.and moved her to an assisted living in the neighborhood. She died a few weeks ago. I love that cloth. Next is a hand loomed cotton plaid that used to be my mother's. I remember using this cloth for meat meals while I was in high school. It shrank and no longer fit her table. We used to use heavy hand loomed table cloths for weekday meals and a more refined white cloth for Shabbat. My mother gave this cloth to me several years ago. On the bottom is a 1940's cotton print cloth that had been my mother in law's. It is one of the many things that made it to our apartment as my husband has had the difficult task of cleaning out his parents' home. This cloth has not just strawberries, a '4...