sarah in nyc

This is the atara/neckband for Hannah's tallit. The base fabric is a metallic silk shantung. The photographs don't convey just how shiny this fabric is. Think tin foil and that will be almost right. I hadn't expected that this metallic fabric would take paint. My usual experience with metallic fabrics is that dye just beads up ad disappears. But it takes the color just beautifully. I fused the metallic shantung to a fusible batting and then did both bobbin quilting and regular quilting using a meander stitch. Hanna lives in my building. She has been asking me questions about her Torah reading. We may sit down and study it together looking at traditional sources. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy working with Hannah? What a pleasure to work with a kid who is thinking all of the time.

Check out the clock gadgets to the right of this post. We brought our older son to the airport yesterday. He is spending the year in Israel. Right, now both of our big kids are in Asia, but on opposite ends of the continent. The clocks are helpful to me so I don't call my kids in the middle of the night, but also serves as a link to their new far-away lives. Each one of my kids is off on a wonderful adventure. I look forwatd to seeing them when they return.

When we went to Israel in 1970, one of the places we visited was Madam Farida's workshop. Madam Farida and her workshop of embroiders made European style dresses using traditional Arab/Bedouin embroidery motifs. My mother's friend Bernice has several of these dresses. she brought my mother to the workshop. My mother chose a motif, a dress style, the colors and the fabric. The blue dress pictured, with the red and yellow embroidery was the second dress that my mother had had made for her. The first was black with bronze and white embroidery. When my older sister was in Israel for her junior year, she went to visit Madam Farida's--perhaps to place the order for this dress. There Madame, Farida had a wall of photographs of celebrities and good customers wearing her creations. Madam Farida pointed out a photograph with "Madam Bernice" ( my mother's friend) and "some lady" wearing their Farida dresses. My sister got all excited, my mother was the "s...

After my father died, my mother gave me all of my father's tallitot. Actually, more accurately, she gave me all of the tallitot that were in the house. Some of them were my father's and others had just sort of shown up at the house. Many of my father's tallitot were no longer being worn because they were in fact, worn out and too fragile to wear. I had thought of perhaps making a piece out of them, but in the end, donated them to the local funeral home for them to use for men who did not have their own tallitot to be buried in. After my father had wrecked the tallit that he had woven for his 70's birthday--by not following the washing directions I had given him, he began wearing a conventional tallit again. Because he was having trouble moving around, he had a tailor stitch it so it would drape in the traditional "flip over the shoulders" manner. I made my father an atara/neckband to put on that tallit. So for you sentimentalists out there, this atara was from...

As promised, here are some photographs of some of the textiles that have been entrusted to my care. I will keep adding to this exhibit in the next several months. My father's first pulpit was in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The kilt pictured above is made out of Nova Scotia tartan wool. My oldest sister was born in Halifax and received a baby sized pleated skirt with straps when she was born. My parents stayed close to several of their Halifax friends. When they would visit us, in Quincy, they would often bring a skirt. We all went to Halifax when I was 12. We all got kilts. My friennd Shauna who grew up in Halifax tells me that these treasured kilts are in the eyes of Haligonians, not the treasures we assumed them to be, but the Haligonian equivalent of an I heart NY t-shirt. Never the less, my daugher has worn some of these skirts over the years. One is with her in China and will be worn against the chilly winds of Harbin. As this is being written, I am hand washing two of the ski...

We just got back from Quincy. It feels like I am now keeper of the textiles. My mother gave me treasures from her trove of table cloths. She also gave me the dresses that were embroidered for her in Jerusalem in 1970. I will begin posting photos of my mother's treasures. I know that for some people, a table cloth is just a table cloth. For my mother, they were talismanic. Each one a symbol of being a certain kind of a lady who knew how to set a table well, a woman who knew how to present a lovely and gracious dinner. My daughter who is spending the fall in Harbin got my mother's fur coat that was made for my mother in preparation for her spending winters in Halifax. It feels sad leaving the house I grew up in, and soon having two of my kids going away for long periouds of time.

Today my family and I go to my mother's house to help her pack up and move to an apartment. My parents moved into the house in the summer of 1957. The Postcard images are from before I was born, but this is what down town , or the square , as we called it looked when I wa a little kid, before more efficient traffic patterns were instituted. Our house was a ten minute walk from the square. When we were little, the trek to the library felt long. Summers, we used to stop off at the Waldorf Cafeteria, on Hancock street, now part of the train starion parking lot, for a drink of water.

Miriam, and her son, Jacob, who had taken my spring semester tallit making workshop at Ansche Chesed, came by this morning to tie their tzitzit . The way the workshop was structured, students selected a verse, or verses from their torah reading and then painted the neckband/ atara and the corner pieces/ pinot . Students selected the base fabric for their tallit and then i put the whole thing together. The last step is tying the tzitzit . This is a close up of Miriam tying her tzitzit. She chose a wonderful purple for her tallit . She tied the tzitzit for two of her corners ( She had to get to work.) and took her tallit home to finish it there. When I have photos of the completed tallit I will post them. Jacob decided to use techelet , the murex dyed blue wrapping thread for tying his tzitit . You can see some of the lovely decorative stitching on the edge of the pinah/ corner piece . That diamond stitch is just so pretty. Another view of Miriam tying her tzitzit.

The other day I finished the last text stripe for the tallit . Nearly all of Psalm 104 is on the tallit . This is a big thing. It's a long Psalm. My client didn't ask for the entire Psalm, so why did I push my self to get the whole thing on the tallit ? My client has been suffering from a a disease long term. It saps her strength and keeps her from doing many of the things she loves to do. My client is an avid birder. she is someone who loves spending lots of time out in nature. The nature of her illness though, keeps her close to home, and keeps her from many of the things that she really loves to do. The text of this Psalm though is like a tour through the natural world. It feels like one of those lovely coffee table books "A Day in the Life of_____". Instead of being say, a day in New York or Paris, this Psalm is a day on the earth. I love being able to bring the universe to my client. In the photo, you also see the beginning of the stripes that I am building bet...

Lat night I had a tallit design meeting with a woman who is both an old friend and a repeat client. My friend is also a therapist ( the default occupation for women in my neighborhood). As we were evaluating different verses to use on this new tallit I had a bit of an epiphany. I do these design meetings where we figure out the right verses for a piece and then design the piece around the verses, fairly often. Sometimes the route to figuring out the right texts and designs for a tallit is a direct one. One of my favorite work memories was coming up with the text for a Torah mantle that was being designed to honor the wedding anniversary of two college professors. We each had a bible or a prayerbook in hand and we each shouted out verses to one another. One of us would shout out a verse and another would nix it with gusto. After about ten minutes, we got the right verse. That process felt almost like being a contestant on Jeopardy . When I work with therapists, the route is much ...

So here it is, my new Janome11590. The model number is included for those of you who care about such things. Yes this machine is also sold with a Kenmore nameplate. If you really want to know which Kenmore model number this is, you can visit www.patternreview.com . If you want to buy this very model, I got it at www.overstock.com . I am of mixed mind about the many stitches. On the one hand, many of them are seriously adorable. Many of them are even useful. I just edged a black tallit with the checkerboard stitch in back on black silk. It is truly elegant. I also used the diamond stitch in gold to attach the atara/neckband to the tallit. That is quite elegant. The dark side of these fabulous stitches is that they are a bit distracting. I am afraid that I might end up playing with stitches, rather than actually working. It can end up being the sewing equivalent of seeing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I know that lots of people have machines with many mor...

Is now complete, thanks to my new Janome. The machine runs like a dream. And now some details about the dress. It was reconstructed from a thrifted Tommy Hilfiger shirt. The front button placket is the back of the dress. The smocking was done by hand, and was much less time consuming or painful than I had anticipated. The dress is hemmed with a double row of circular ruffles. It's really long for a new (ish) baby. But non crawlers can wear long dresses. Once babies begin to crawl, long dresses are a big bother. I'm hoping that this dress can be worn this summer, and next summer as well once Tabitha begins to walk.