making a sheath dress out of about a yard of fabric

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 decided to cut the front and the back in one piece, the way vests are sometimes cut out, so there are no side seams but only shoulder seams.

I cut the back seam with curves that match mine. I have cut out enough dresses to guesstimate the right curve. I then folded both layers of fabric in half lengthwise at the underarm and cut a fish eye dart for the sides of my waist. I unfolded the fabric, and then refolded it with the fold running about 1/4 of the way in on the front. I cut two more eye shaped vertical darts for my front waist.

I sewed up the shoulder seams, the side seams and the darts, and then tried the dress on.The darts needed refining. They all poked out a little funny. But the fit of the dress was awfully close without very much fussing. A yard or so resulted in a dress for my not skinny body.

The dress was actually a bit short for my taste. I added a circular ruffle out of a rayon cotton blend red/pink wavy strip. I guess the stripe can serve as cautionary warning on what happens when you imbibe too many of the cocktails depicted on the rest of the dress. I still need to play with the neckline a bit.

I don't usually think of myself as particularly good at engineering garments. This feels like a huge leap forward for me.

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

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