Skip to main content

the next sewing lesson



This week we attached the bottom two tiers of curcular ruffles to the dress. Since the first tier went in perfectly, I assumed that the second would as well. I was wrong. So a bunch of unpicking later, we pinned the tier and my student sewed it . As she was working I realized that a normal sewing teacher woud not have a beginner sewing a knit to a woven so early in the learning process, but since I hadn't told my student that this was potentially difficult she did fine.

For the bottom tier, I showed my student the magic of quarter marking. We marked both the dress and the chiffon ruffle and it was really easy for it to come together.

I have been using a large piece of sidewalk chalk for marking. the chalk was left over from my now 18 year old's fifth birthday party. My student commented , " The great thing about marking with chalk is that the marks come out so easily. That is also the terrible thing about the chalk."

My student is going to zig zag around the hems of all of the chiffon ruffles between now and her next lesson. During the next lesson we will play with the shape of the bodice. It n3eeds some darting at the shoulder, a slightly deeper neckline and we also need to edge the neckline. I love how chic this dress is. It is entirley my student's design. She plans to wear it to a Bat Mitzvah party. It will look great while she is dancing.
Posted by Picasa

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Barukh Dayan HaEmet - Blessed be the True Judge

In 1986, when I first began working for my synagogue, one of the volunteers was a teeny little Austrian woman. Ida was so little and cute, you could swear you could just put her in your pocket and carry her around. Ida also babysat for a little girl  in our community. When I saw the two of them running around together and laughing as if they were both four, I knew that when I had kids, Ida would babysit for my kids. In order to be sure that Ida would take care of my oldest, I told her I was pregnant at the same time I told my mother. Soon after my oldest was born,  Ida was ready. She was silly, but she was also Austrian. She had her rules. She would care for a child only until they could walk. She felt that she was too old to chase children. She would work only twelve hours a week. The baby had to be fed, dressed and ready to go out when she showed up. Ida's rules made sense. It taught me, and my oldest, the value of having a schedule. Ida and ...

Two funerals and a birthday

 I know that it has been a while since I posted. We went to Boston last weekend to celebrate the bar mitzvah of a family friend. I may post about the weekend in a different post. Two disparate topics in one post is all I can manage today.  Yesterday was a busy day and filled with big emotions. We began the day at the funeral  of a young man who was a Hebrew School classmate of my older son's. I had such fond, fond memories of the sweet, funny, kind and exceptionally bright young man who also had terrible struggles. I kept remembering the young man both  as a delightful child full of promise and the suffering that he and his family have been through for the past many years. I sat with two women whose children attended preschool with the young man. We three held one another in our sorrow. Yesterday was also my husband's birthday. My husband is not someone who wants things.  When we were  at Bingo---the kosher version of Costco I spotted a large package of ste...

It All Feels Like Yesterday

Today, an oponion piece in the Wall Street Journal had the headline These Days, It All Feels Like Yesterday. It seemed a perfect way to sum up how we live our lives these days. I have been far more willing during this Covid time to do the sort of slow going work that I tend to avoid like the plague during normal times. I have been working away on Max's tallit. I had decided to get the lettering on the atara in a new to me way. Actually, to be completely honest, this is a method I have read about since I was a kid. You draw the design on a bit of what is called "waste fabric". Then you embroider the design and then you pull away the waste fabric thread by thread. The embroidered design remains, but all of your guidelines are gone, as if by magic. I had more or less finished embroidering the letters. (There were little bits of letters I hadn't quite finished but knew that I could add after the purple fabric was pulled away.) I began by picking out all of my red basting ...