the next sewing lesson

My student is making this dress to wear to a special event. Often, my student will start the design process by going fabric shopping in my work space. She fell in love with a black rayon jersey knit. I don't blame her. I made two dresses out of the same fabric. It feels divine on and has a great drape.

Then my student began to sketch a dress with three tiers of ruffles.We drafted and constructed a tank dress out of the rayon based on my students measurements. We planned to suspend the ruffled tiers from the tank dress. My student did a great job of binding the armholes with cross grain strips of the rayon. The results were tidy, a nice testament to her progress over these weeks.

We has lots of discussion back and forth about the tiered ruffles and what they ought to look like, and what their placement ought to be, should the tiers start at the neck? or further down on the bodice? I showed my student a dress I had made using circular ruffles at the hem. she loved the restrained look. I was also dying to show her how to construct circular ruffles. The process is both so goofy and satisfying.

I didn't have enough of the rayon knit to make the ruffles out of the same fabric as the dress. But a bit of shopping in my stash turned up some sheer black poly crepe that fit the bill, and dressed the dress up several notches.

We had a couple of weeks without lessons because of Passover. At the start of today's lesson, my student tried the dress on and discussed how she wanted the dress to fit more snugly. The bodice was a bit floppy and the skirt looked a bit tenty for her taste. After considering a couple of options, I decided to make two princess seam like darts from neck to hem. This was an entirely new concept for my student.She took the dress off and turned it inside out. The width of the dress just below the armholes was 16 inches. I marked 4 inches in from each side seam and folded the dress on those line. I then drew an "s"curve that I thought would work for my student's body. She was dubious, but willing to try and sewed up one of the long darts. I had her try the dress on with only one of the darts sewn. She was really impressed with the improved fit. So I then marked, and she sewed the other dart. She was delighted with the fit. We will need to play with the shoulders a bit, but that is for another lesson.

She also sewed on the first tier of ruffle. I love how she was so comfortable stretching the base dress a bit as she sewed so that the dress could be put on or taken off without the threads breaking. The next tier has been sewn together ( with a French seam). We need to figure out the placement of the next two tiers and them hem all of the layers . Then we will finish off the neckline.

Clearly, my student has not been taking on sewing tasks in a traditional manner. She is learning skills as she needs them.

My student is less curvy than my dressmaking dummy. The dress looks much cuter on my student than it does on the dummy. Right now the first tier dips down several inches longer in the back than it does in the front. I think that looks really elegant. My student is unsure . We can get that figured out next week.

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...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog