sarah in nyc

I had sewn binding along the edges of Sara-Beth's tallit. I'm actully not sure o the fiber content, but it is a lovely black silky fabric. I sewed it on by serging the raw edges together and then topstitching with a three step zig zag. Unfortunately I had to undo the binding on one of the long sides. My eyes were really not up to the task. Luckily I remembered one of the members of the Creative Machine List mentioning how she used to use a single edge razor as a seam ripper when she was a young girl. I was able to undo the sewing and not cause any damage. This is a very big deal. I finally got the binding sewn on properly. and I'm happy with it. Next, I turned to the corner pieces, or Pinot. There is a tradition to have the corner pieces totally blend in with the tallit and the tzitzit. I don't follow that tradition. I like to have the pinot be really wonderful to look at, so one's attention is brought to the tzitzit, which are of course the most important part of t...

If you had asked me before yesterday evening what a wristlet was, I would have answered, that it was a corsage one wears on the wrist. My daughter is briefly home from college, before she goes off to China. Clearly, this short window of time having my daughter home makes me much more willing to make anything she asks me to make for her. Given the fact that my daughter, like her mother is the sort of person that clothing just sticks to. People give her clothing, because she has so much fun with clothes. At the moment she owns a crazy amount of clothes. So my daughter didn't need me to make her another cute skirt or another silly pair of pajama pants. She mentioned last night, that she wanted a wristlet. A wristlet in current parlance is a small purse worn on the wrist, say during a party small enough to hold ones essentials while in party mode. In my day, young party going women wore disco bags, so a wristlet is the new millennium version of a disco bag. I asked my daughter to dra...

This dress represents many leaps forward in my student's sewing ability. This dress, like all of the others made during our lessons was designed by my student. The bodice is made out of a cotton jersey. Because it was so thin, she used two layers in the bodice. I was afraid that one layer of jersey wouldn't be strong enough to support the skirt. She wanted a modified racer back . We measured my student and used those measurements to draft the bodice directly onto the jersey with a piece of sidewalk chalk. My student suggested that we keep her measurements so we could keep using them over and over. Since my student is 12 and is rapidly growing, I didn't think that it made that much sense to keep the measurements long term. My student has purchased a knit bundle from http://www.fabricmartfabrics.com/ and fell in love with the poly jersey knit which makes up the skirt of the dress. My student sewed a tube out of a selvedge to selvedge strip of the poly jersey. My student ...

I made this blanket and jacket set for my neighbor's new baby. I knew that it was a hit when my two macho sons started cooing " That is so cuuuute.", with no irony in their voices. My daughter asked me to make her a similar jacket in her size, but there isn't enough dalmation spot fabric left for that. The blanket is self lined. The jacket is lined in a cushy white cotton knit. I didn't use a pattern but rather a simple dolman sleeved shape. I guestimated the size. It ought to fit the baby at some point All of the fabrics came by way of http://www.fabricmart.com/ knit bundles. When I first unwrapped the dalmation fabric, I thought, " Cute, but not for me.". I'm glad I had it around for baby duds. Gotta love them bundles. I also liked that it was a relatively quick present to make. My kids are begging me to make their as yet, non-existent children clothing. I assume that their kids will have lots of really goofy clothes made by me. I am a firm belie...

My buddy came to town on Wednesday for a New York fix. The wonderful thing about having a sewing buddy come to town is that it becomes possible to do the wall to wall fiber touring that my family can do only in small doses. Thursday we did lots of running around. Our day began at the Museum of the City of New York and the Valentina exhibit. Click here for a video about her work. http://www.style.com/video/fashion-moments/fashion-moments/1896809784/valentina-schlee/9341623001 We saw the Fashioning Felt exhibit at the Cooper Hewett. You can visit virtually http://http//exhibitions.cooperhewitt.org/Fashioning-Felt/ . The exhibit was fabulous. It was just plain fun. It is such a tactile intense exhibit that I had to control myself from not just touching, but also rolling around on the pieces exhibited. Clearly, I wasn't the only person who felt this way, ( pun NOT intended) because there were small samples of the felt to touch near the exit of the exhibit. We also went to the Kips Bay...

Here is the dress, more or less complete. I cut the neckline a bit lower. I edged both the neckline and the arm holes with strips of a black stretch cotton pique. Cindy Ann had asked about how I do the bindings. Because this was a stretch fabric I simply cut two strips on the cross grain. One is for the arm holes, the other for the neck. I fold the strip in half the ling way and serge it to the RS of the d ress . I then top stitch the seam allowance. I guess that technically it isn't a binding but it is quick, easy and does the job. this finish lasts through many machine washings. I began to laboriously un-stitch the striped ruffle, and then I realized that just cutting the whole thing off would be much quicker and easier on both the nerves and my eyes. I sewed a strip of the same black pique to the hem. No, no pleating, just a boring extension. Sometimes, boring is the right choice. I may fuss with the side waist darts a bit to make them work just a bit better. For those w...

Well, this is the dress with the cicular ruffle edging. As I look at it, the pink wavy stripe seems too foofy for me. I think I will replace it with something a bit more somber. Ruffles tend to make me look like a drag queen. The dress fits me better than it fits the dummy. I could have cheated the fit on the dress form and set up a bunch of bulldog clips in the back, out of camera view,to adjust the fit on the dummy, the way they do in catalogs, but you will just have to take my word on it. I'm thinking of black pleats intead of the wavy ruffle. Any opinions???

cleaning up, after the beautiful Mother's Day dinner they cooked for me. This was a far cry from the sweetly intentioned but terrible breakfasts they prepared for me when they were little. They served mango-orange chicken, a green salad and noodles. It is lovely to be taken care of by my boys.

A couple of years ago, one of the clothing lofts in the Garment District was selling what seeemed to me to be the cutest skirt on the planet. It was a stretch cotton poplin a-lined skirt with a huge graphic print of a martini. It was adorable, but didn't come in my size. A few months later I found a similar, but smaller print also in a stretch cotton poplin. I bought two yards, and last summer, made myself an a-lined knee length skirt out of one yard of it. The other yard was just waiting for inspiration to hit. I had assumed that inspiration would come in the way of a matching top. Instead inspiration came in a new ( for me) way of thinking about cutting a sheath dress. My normal method of cutting a sheath dress, is to cut the front and the back as seperate pieces. Sometimes only the back or the front is seamed, and sometimes, both for additional shaping possibilities. As I lay my fabric out on my kitchen floor to cut, with another dress over the fabric as my cutting guide, I deci...

My last knit bundle from http://www.fabricmartfabrics.com/ included this printed mesh knit that looks like the bottom of most of the New England ponds that I have known. For some perverse reason, I just fell in love with the fabric. It was too sheer to wear on it's own. A previous Fabricmart bundle included a tan knit that was a lovely soft fabric but in a truly unflattering color. It made the perfect lining for the dress. I used a fitted RTW tank top as the basis for the dress. I lay the pond scum fabric out folded in 1/4 the long way. I folded the top in 1/2 and cut around it until hip level, then I just approximated my hip shape and cut accordingly. i used the cut out pond scum dress and the pattern for the lining. I sewed the shoulder seams and side seams of the dress and the lining. Then I put the lining inside the pond scum dress, serged the two together at the neck and armholes. I then turned those seams and top stitched using a three stepped zig zag . the lining is ab...

A big shawl tallit is seen on both the right and the wrong side of the fabric. This works just fine for a traditional woven tallit. The woven stripes can be seen both on the face and the reverse of the fabric. When you work with a tallit that is sewn , or pieced, rather than woven this does not naturally occur. I find tallitot with what I think of as naked undersides to be rather distressing. Maybe it is an OCD thing, but they really bother me in a visceral way. Those tallitot just seem WRONG. I admit that according to halacha /Jewish law there is nothing wrong with a tallit that is blank on the underside. But to me it feels like something that ought not be done. My neurosis on this matter has led to having to figure out how to construct tallitot that read as stripes on both sides, yet don't have nasty raw edges. Over the years I have come up with several solutions. I had once done a tallit where I hemmed each stripe before attaching it to the next stripe with a three step zi...

This is the street level view of Broadway across the street from my apartment. The photo comes by way of http://www.biking-in-manhattan.com/ . Broadway was designed by the planners of the city to be the West Side corollary of Park Avenue, a tree line avenue with a green way in the center. Clearly, things didn't work out according to plan. Broadway is the commercial spine of the West Side, but we do have a tree lined avenue with a strip of greenery in the median strip. For those of you who live in more bucolic settings, this might seems hugely urban to you. But when my youngest and I were once walking at this very spot on his way home from day care, he commented that we lived in the jungle. At first I thought that he might be referring to the Urban jungle--but no he pointed out that there were trees, so surely we must be in the jungle. This morning the birds were singing in full voice as I was walking to services. It was a wonderful harbinger of spring on this cold and damp day....

My older son turned 18 during Passover. Some of his friends are coming by tomorrow afternoon to help him celebrate his birthday. When we discussed what sort of a cake to bake, I don't know how, but the idea of a drowned Barbie in a pool cake emerged. I think that part of it is a cynical riff on those doll cakes that little girly girls just love, where a cake baked in a bowl becomes the skirt. As a fairly manly sort of a guy, clearly a traditional doll cake was not appropriate. But there is something just so satisfying about a mutilated Barbie. I baked a cake out of my just post WWII Jewish cook book. ( The Jewish Cook Book by Mildred Grosberg Bellin ) A good and simple recipe for a layer cake. The frosting recipe comes from a fabulous cake decorating book written in the 1960's, Decorating Cakes and Party Foods Baking Too!, by Louise Spencer. The lack of punctuation in that title is not mine. The frosting is a butter cram made with milk thickened with flour. It's stab...